Everything is here, and we can imagine outcomes, or sense what might be, or what might have been. The pages seem to function as a kind of notation in which future actions can be imagined, yet they also seem to be at the heart of the work. This is characteristic of Alÿs’s practice and is noted by the writer David Toop:Īmbiguities exist in Alÿs’s work, particularly in the question of documentation that haunts performance… The mixing point of Alÿs’s work comes through files of notes, which collect together drawings, diagrams, textual scribbles. In keeping with the traditions of happenings and Fluxus the works also provide a poetic score for future actions. The lists often end with a hyphen or a preposition missing its accompanying verb, which invites the viewer to consider further additions or interpretations. These works document Alÿs’s own ‘personal’ observations in the city and the use of pencil additions to the typewritten lists imply the ongoing and unfinished nature of the walks. Alongside seemingly mundane requests for directions and references to the weather are mentions of the attempted bombing that had taken place on the London Underground earlier that day, demonstrating the coexistence of the prosaic and the atypical in a metropolis, and how shifts between the everyday and the anomalous affect the behaviour of a city’s inhabitants. The panel titled ‘TO RECEIVE’ does not include a photograph, but contains a typewritten transcript of snatches of conversations Alÿs overheard on London’s Oxford Street over the course of a couple of minutes on 21 July 2005. The artist has described how walking through the city allowed him to explore a wide range of behaviours: ‘You are aware or awake to everything that happens in your peripheral vision, the little incidents, smells, images, sounds … Walking brings a rich state of consciousness.’ (Alÿs in 21 Portman Square 2005, p.48.) Displayed together in a horizontal line, these nine works suggest the significant breadth of behaviour observable in a city and the nuances with which these actions can be interpreted. The final work is titled ‘UNCLASSIFIED’ and brings together more disparate actions, such as ‘to bounce’, ‘to fiddle’, ‘to neglect’ and ‘to run’. Six of these panels include a photograph in the upper right hand corner, which provide a visual synonym to complement the list of possible actions. The texts are all written on a typewriter. The subsequent seven panels are titled with an active verb followed underneath by a list of synonyms. The first work contains the typewritten text of the series’ title printed onto white A4 paper and is dated by the artist in pencil underneath, ‘(July 2005)’. A Personal Repertoire of Possible Behaviour While Walking the Streets in London Town is a series of nine framed works on paper, which document the artist Francis Alÿs’s walks around London in 2005.
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