Book pp46-169
190x245h 5 feb
5/2/10
28 Zócalo Mexico City 22 May 1999 In collaboration with Rafael Ortega Video projection (12 hours)
The filming begins at dawn with the flag-raising ceremony, and ends at dusk with the descending of the flag. The camera follows the progression of the shadow of the flagpole, and the subsequent displacement of the people following the shadow as they seek refuge from the sun on the open plaza. The camera lens describes a lateral movement of three degrees per hour during a total period of twelve hours. The Zócalo square in Mexico, along with Beijing’s Tiananmen and Moscow’s Red Square, is an example of the civic open spaces that were adapted in the twentieth century to stage the spectacle of mass politics. Despite the colossal and oppressive dimensions of the square, Alÿs understands its function as the ‘Theatre of the City’, the locus of collective desires and the machine where social pressure is released in the form of ritual experience.The twelve-hour video records in real time how the progression of the shadow of the flagpole in the middle of the esplanade creates a spontaneous choreography of people sheltering from the sun, and moves like a sundial all through the day. The film offers the clearest example of Alÿs’s motto: ‘When social encounters provoke sculptural situations’. It demonstrates how the poetic potential of the city goes well beyond any hegemonic structure, almost as if it were the expression of an unconscious cosmological ritual.
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