Francis Alÿs: Children’s Games – where all desire begins

Kids and their inner worlds play a central role in his work. Since 1999, he has been creating an ongoing series of video works titled Children’s Games, some of which were exhibited at the Belgian Pavilion during the 2022 Venice Biennale. Each video, typically three to eight minutes long, captures the essence of a game. Whether in urban or rural settings, forests, deserts, or along coastlines – the children’s excitement, joy, and extraordinary creativity are universally felt. Some of the games may be familiar and transcultural, others gradually reveal their rules, and still others have emerged from the realities of conflict, war, or pandemics. But all serve as powerful reminders of the creativity and resilience embedded in play.

Mexico City, Mexico, 1999; 4:43 min
In collaboration with Julien Devaux
Courtesy Francis Alys and Jan Mot, Brussels

High above the city that shimmers like a distant sea, a boy kicks a plastic bottle half full of liquid up a steep shanty road of light and dark. A norteño song plays somewhere. A truck passes. The challenge is to get to the top of the hill by kicking the bottle steadily upwards, intercepting it as it rolls back, kicking it again, playing with and against gravity. The bottle drifts and dodges, zigs and zags, is briefly kidnapped by a dog. At the end, the Sisyphean stakes of the game become clear as the bottle gets away and with a groan the boy runs downhill after it.

Lorna Scott Fox

Amman, Jordan, 2010; 2:37 min
In collaboration with Julien Devaux
Courtesy Francis Alys and Jan Mot, Brussels

This game requires considerable practice and precision, especially on the uneven terrain of an urban waste lot. The action consists in flicking a marble with thumb and index finger so that it reaches a hole in the ground in the fewest possible stages, ideally knocking away other marbles in its path. The player can keep any marble he has knocked out. If he doesn’t knock out any, he must wait his turn to try again, hoping another player won’t claim his marble in the meantime. Whoever collects the most wins. As the marbles tumble into the hollow, we see the players’ heads circularly reflected for a second in their tiny, polished spheres.

Lorna Scott Fox

Salto Acha, Venezuela, 2011; 6:10 min
In collaboration with Benjamin Mast, Julien Devaux, and Félix Blume Courtesy Francis Alys and Jan Mot, Brussels

Girls and boys, together for once, hunt through lush grass and undergrowth, on the lookout for well- camouflaged grasshoppers. When one is found its hind legs are pulled off, though not its wings. Each child hurls his or her grasshopper up into the air, where it flutters against the sky above the upturned faces of the skipping, wheeling children. Unable to fly far, it will soon free-fall and be captured again. The winner is the player whose grasshopper stays the longest in the air.

Lorna Scott Fox

Oaxaca, Mexico, 2012; 5:05 min
In collaboration with Elena Pardo and Félix Blume Courtesy Francis Alys and Jan Mot, Brussels

The game is filmed from above in a single take, emphasizing the inexorable process of subtraction. Six children place five chairs in a row, facing in alternate directions. When the music starts, the players skip one behind the other around the chairs. When the music stops, everyone scrambles to occupy the nearest chair and one person is left standing. The loser carries a chair away, stomping out of shot to the left. The music starts again, and so it goes on until the winner claims the last chair. Then there is only an empty space.

Lorna Scott Fox

Hong Kong, 2020; 5:28 min
In collaboration with Rafael Ortega, Julien Devaux, and Félix Blume Courtesy Francis Alys and Jan Mot, Brussels

Stark though it is, the roof terrace with its low ochre-red wall and washed turquoise abstract seems the nearest thing to a garden among the forbidding cliffs of mass housing that rear up all around. Like bold tendrils of organic life, three young girls appear with jump ropes and show off some individual fancy licks, before switching to a stately coordination mode. Their bright white ropes make squiggles in the air like waved sparklers at night, while wrists and feet maintain a rock-steady beat. The joy of skilled movement, of pure synchrony, illuminates their faces.

Lorna Scott Fox