Taipei Travel

In Francis Alÿs’ sketchbook, one can see many drybrush strokes, careful tracing lines, and thin wash drawings. Also, in his video works, one will find the artist in his early stage, participants or children who join his work later touching the sand, water, air, and all sorts of everyday objects. These performers might have left irregular dots and lines on these objects as they moved or pushed randomly, planned, focused, or unfocused. In his paintings and video works, the viewers can always sense the implication of “coming into contact.” “Children’s game” is always triggered or starts by “touching,” “rubbing,” or “interacting” with the nature of the world and the surrounding environment. Then, the ideas often merge into the world or the atmosphere like vapor.

In the freedom of “game” (the suspension of reality), children “come into contact” with the environment, skills in handling objects, and the mastery of interacting with their friends. Alÿs’ arrangement and camera lens in particular highlight the “role-playing” and “action decision” within a group, which is a sort of “politicalness” that comes naturally with the game. The “game” suspends all the limits of reality and allows them (and even us) to draw lines and cross them. The difficulty of distinguishing, discriminating, and alternating between “limit” and “crossing,” or “line” and “path” seems to be the “lines” made by the artist while playing with children in different regions and political climates.

“Climate” refers to the ever-changing physical environment well as the intangible political environment. The viewer may always find Alÿs touching and walking “along” the boundary of climates in his works. The “nature” in “The Nature of Game,” his project for the Belgian Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, may trigger various forms of games that exist in the climates in the diverse landscape and venues of “biopolitics.” The game exemplifies the place and state of human beings. It always begins with the state of freedom.