FRANCIS ALYS

As essayist Cuauhtémoc Medina puts it, 'A desperate situation requires an absurd solution.' On April 11, 2002, 500 volunteers (mostly students from the University of Lima) were supplied with shovels and asked to form a single line at the foot of a giant sand dune in Ventanilla, an area outside of Lima. This human comb moved the 1600-foot-long sand dune about four inches from its original position. When Faith Can Move Mountains attempts to translate social tensions into narratives that in turn intervene in the imaginary landscape of a place. Instead of following the classic model of an artist or exhibition catalogue, this book focuses on the conjunction between the social and historical conditions that the work appropriated, and the metaphoric analysis that the intervention put in motion. Through images (such as photos of the event and drawings for the project) and text (including letters and documents of the intervention) this publication, reminiscent of a science book, narrates the facts and concepts of the work.

La publicación reproduce el cuaderno personal de Francis Alÿs en el que el artista reflejó sus recorridos a pie en el entorno de las Torres Gemelas tras los atentados del 11 de septiembre de 2001 e