Reel UnreelFrancis Als

Reel-Unreel is a film by Francis Als, made jointly with Afghan director Amal Maiwandi and French architect Julien Devaux. It was filmed in Kabul in November 2011. It is a twenty-minute

video portraying the reality of a city punished by years of war. Essentially, it is a document that

denounces the situation of poverty in the city and the barbarism and destruction of the

country's heritage by the Taliban's ideological and religious fundamentalism.

The film was inspired by events which occurred in September 2001, when the Taliban

confiscated hundreds of thousands of reels of film from the National Film Archive in Kabul and

burnt them, although it seems that in the end the original films were saved and that the films

burnt were only copies.

The film takes viewers through the old part of Kabul, showing the heart of the city through the

activity of some children who run through the city rolling 35 mm film reels. The action is a

metaphor for the game of doing and undoing. The description of the urban landscape is a

constantly moving scenario, where the background sounds are as suggestive as the clear

pictures of the streets. The bells of bicycles, the whirr of military helicopter rotors, as they fly

over the city carrying out surveillance, the horns of cars, the shouts of people, the bleating of

sheep, street musicians, and the sound of a nail being hammered fill the document with

meaning. One of the boys unwinds a reel of film, leaving a winding black trail, while the second

boy, who is following him, winds the tape onto a second reel. In the end, the films with which the

boys have been playing are partly destroyed. Part of one film ends up in a fire in the middle of the

street and one of the reels falls over a precipice.

The title of this work tells us that the action of the film is superimposed on the real image of the

city but it also refers to the distorted image of Afghanistan we are given by the western media.

Meanwhile, the route followed by the children, as they push the film on its random journey

through the poor and dirty city, is an allegory of the desolation and improvisation with which new

generations are writing their history there.

The Game of doing and undoing

Reel-Unreel is a film by Francis Als, made jointly with Afghan director Amal Maiwandi and French architect Julien Devaux. It was filmed in Kabul in November 2011. It is a twenty-minute

video portraying the reality of a city punished by years of war. Essentially, it is a document that

denounces the situation of poverty in the city and the barbarism and destruction of the

country's heritage by the Taliban's ideological and religious fundamentalism.

The film was inspired by events which occurred in September 2001, when the Taliban

confiscated hundreds of thousands of reels of film from the National Film Archive in Kabul and

burnt them, although it seems that in the end the original films were saved and that the films

burnt were only copies.

The film takes viewers through the old part of Kabul, showing the heart of the city through the

activity of some children who run through the city rolling 35 mm film reels. The action is a

metaphor for the game of doing and undoing. The description of the urban landscape is a

constantly moving scenario, where the background sounds are as suggestive as the clear

pictures of the streets. The bells of bicycles, the whirr of military helicopter rotors, as they fly

over the city carrying out surveillance, the horns of cars, the shouts of people, the bleating of

sheep, street musicians, and the sound of a nail being hammered fill the document with

meaning. One of the boys unwinds a reel of film, leaving a winding black trail, while the second

boy, who is following him, winds the tape onto a second reel. In the end, the films with which the

boys have been playing are partly destroyed. Part of one film ends up in a fire in the middle of the

street and one of the reels falls over a precipice.

The title of this work tells us that the action of the film is superimposed on the real image of the

city but it also refers to the distorted image of Afghanistan we are given by the western media.

Meanwhile, the route followed by the children, as they push the film on its random journey

through the poor and dirty city, is an allegory of the desolation and improvisation with which new

generations are writing their history there.

The Game of doing and undoing

Many of Als' works involve close observation of social, cultural and economic conditions in cities. Much of his

work is based on a journey on foot, where the artist usually appears walking alone. Reel-Unreel is the culmination of a number of videos in which the artist also uses walking and playing as a pretext to explore cities and find out

about them, what happens in them and the people who live in them. The itineraries and their apparently erratic

view present the author's thoughts and show us what he wants us to see. "Walking is not a medium, it is an

attitude. It favours inspiration, it is conducive to the development of ideas," says the artist. InThe Leak (a work performed in various cities between 1995 and 2002, including Ghent, Paris and So Paulo), andThe green line (Jerusalem, 2004) the artist takes a walk through the city with a leaking tin of paint which leaves a trail behind him.

In the video Praxis 1 (Mexico City, 1997), Als pushes a block of ice through the streets until it melts away and we see a text saying that sometimes doing something leads to nothing. In another seemingly innocuous film, Railings (London, 2004), the artist walks along the pavements of the city, running a stick along the railings round the

gardens. These films, like most of the author's work, can be identified with the idea we find in the video The collector (Mexico City, 1991-2006), a work in which he pulls a little magnetic toy dog on wheels along, to pick up waste from the street, where we can read: "Sometimes doing something poetic can become political, and

sometimes doing something political can become poetic." This is the key to his work.

Attracted by the cinema of Roberto Rossellini, Abbas Kiarostami and, above all, Franois Truffaut, in Reel-Unreel, in addition to all we have said, Francis Als pays a small tribute to analogue cinema in the poetic image of the film

which is unrolled across the landscape.

On 19 June 2012 the film Reel-Unreel was shown in the ruins of the Behzad cinema in Kabul, a cinema sealed off by the armed forces, which, on this occasion was home to film once again and a secondary venue for Documenta 13 in

Kassel.

Through this exhibition we hope to raise awareness of the work of one of the most interesting artists on the

contemporary cinema scene, taking advantage of the event to reiterate the importance of art and our heritage as

universal assets, and to stress the cultural rights of humanity. These are rights we must not lose sight of.

Carme Sais

Director, Blit, Centre d'Art Contemporani, Girona

Many of Als' works involve close observation of social, cultural and economic conditions in cities. Much of his

work is based on a journey on foot, where the artist usually appears walking alone. Reel-Unreel is the culmination of a number of videos in which the artist also uses walking and playing as a pretext to explore cities and find out

about them, what happens in them and the people who live in them. The itineraries and their apparently erratic

view present the author's thoughts and show us what he wants us to see. "Walking is not a medium, it is an

attitude. It favours inspiration, it is conducive to the development of ideas," says the artist. InThe Leak (a work performed in various cities between 1995 and 2002, including Ghent, Paris and So Paulo), andThe green line (Jerusalem, 2004) the artist takes a walk through the city with a leaking tin of paint which leaves a trail behind him.

In the video Praxis 1 (Mexico City, 1997), Als pushes a block of ice through the streets until it melts away and we see a text saying that sometimes doing something leads to nothing. In another seemingly innocuous film, Railings (London, 2004), the artist walks along the pavements of the city, running a stick along the railings round the

gardens. These films, like most of the author's work, can be identified with the idea we find in the video The collector (Mexico City, 1991-2006), a work in which he pulls a little magnetic toy dog on wheels along, to pick up waste from the street, where we can read: "Sometimes doing something poetic can become political, and

sometimes doing something political can become poetic." This is the key to his work.

Attracted by the cinema of Roberto Rossellini, Abbas Kiarostami and, above all, Franois Truffaut, in Reel-Unreel, in addition to all we have said, Francis Als pays a small tribute to analogue cinema in the poetic image of the film

which is unrolled across the landscape.

On 19 June 2012 the film Reel-Unreel was shown in the ruins of the Behzad cinema in Kabul, a cinema sealed off by the armed forces, which, on this occasion was home to film once again and a secondary venue for Documenta 13 in

Kassel.

Through this exhibition we hope to raise awareness of the work of one of the most interesting artists on the

contemporary cinema scene, taking advantage of the event to reiterate the importance of art and our heritage as

universal assets, and to stress the cultural rights of humanity. These are rights we must not lose sight of.

Carme Sais

Director, Blit, Centre d'Art Contemporani, Girona

Everything Else Is Imaginary

Beginning in 1999 with a boy who is trying to push a plastic bottle along with his feet up a steep street in Mexico City and

continuing until he filmed some children in the same city, playing "rock, paper, scissors", their hands appearing as shadows

on a wall, the Belgian artist Francis Als has produced a beautiful series of videos over the last fourteen years. With the

generic title Children's games, they show children who are indeed still playing and in the open air, either in natural spaces or urban areas that are not subject to control. Boys skip stones over the sea at Tangier, girls jump over an elastic skipping rope

in an internal courtyard in Paris, and with guns made of wood boys pretend to be shooting each other in Baja California. Little

girls build sandcastles on the beach at Knokke-le-Zoute in Belgium, one of Les plages d'Agns (Varda); boys play skittles in Amman in Jordan, while others make grasshoppers jump in Salto Acha (Venezuela). In Oaxaca boys and girls try to hit a

dummy while they are blindfolded and others in the valley of Teotitlan, also in Oaxaca, play their own version of musical

chairs, a boy flies a kite in Balk, Afghanistan, and laughing children play at being the wolf and the sheep, the latter role played

by a little boy who always escapes. His work is delightful. Life throbs in these local games which have a universal sense.

In 2010, in Afghanistan, in the valley of Bamiyan, near the Buddhas sculpted in the rock which were destroyed by the Taliban,

Francis Als filmed some children rolling bicycle and car tyres (perhaps in the past they would have been cart wheels) along

with a stick. A year later the game took a different form when, instead of tyres, other children rolled two reels of film along in

Kabul. They were small format reels with the film running between them, as if in a projector, and the sequence is recorded in

Reel-Unreeel; Perhaps because he was aware of its unique nature and powerful meaning, Als did not include it in Children's games, although it is closely related to it. The boys' trajectory lasts nearly twenty minutes, during which we can think many things and see many others, as the boys roll the reels past.

I thought of the employees of the Kabul National Film Archive (and Als makes it clear that he also thought of them). Using

all their ingenuity and risking their lives, they saved part of the country's film heritage by hiding many copies of films that the

Taliban would have burnt. One of the reels in Reel-Unreel pays out the film and the other winds it up. Some frames are burnt just before one of the reels is lost, when it rolls off a hillside, but the other reel is saved. I also thought how the audio-visual

industry, adopting digital images, has decided to stop making celluloid films, so that a whole legacy of films in the original

format will not be playable and many film makers (and artists, although this is not the case of Als) will not be able to

continue using photo-chemical techniques, and their tangibility, their colour quality and their texture will be lost. Watching

the children playing with it, I thought of celluloid as waste. I also thought that we do not know what images are contained in

the reels they roll along. Do they document reality? Do they record an imaginary world? What do the images think? Their

invisibility invites us to imagine them. We also project our imagination onto the films we see. We cannot see everything and

not everything is made visible. There is always a reverse field, images that are missing. As always, there is a dark side, as in

the pictures that the children are peering at near the end of Francis Als's film.

One child says that in the pictures the people look as if they are locked up. What does cinema lock up? Does a film mirror the

reality surrounding us? Or do its images, because they are images, transform reality? Cinema, through the tension between

reality and imagination, activates the unconscious and stimulates thought: it invites the spectator to believe in images and at

the same time to doubt them. As in games, the frontier between truth and falsehood, reality and fiction, is blurred. However,

there are images produced in the audiovisual world, largely intended for television, which are imposed on us as "the truth"

and require us to believe that they show the world as it is, even when they often constitute a simulation, illustrate a

supposition, simplify events or try to manipulate the viewer.

We also project our imagination onto

the films we see. We cannot see everything

and not everything is made visible

Everything Else Is Imaginary

Beginning in 1999 with a boy who is trying to push a plastic bottle along with his feet up a steep street in Mexico City and

continuing until he filmed some children in the same city, playing "rock, paper, scissors", their hands appearing as shadows

on a wall, the Belgian artist Francis Als has produced a beautiful series of videos over the last fourteen years. With the

generic title Children's games, they show children who are indeed still playing and in the open air, either in natural spaces or urban areas that are not subject to control. Boys skip stones over the sea at Tangier, girls jump over an elastic skipping rope

in an internal courtyard in Paris, and with guns made of wood boys pretend to be shooting each other in Baja California. Little

girls build sandcastles on the beach at Knokke-le-Zoute in Belgium, one of Les plages d'Agns (Varda); boys play skittles in Amman in Jordan, while others make grasshoppers jump in Salto Acha (Venezuela). In Oaxaca boys and girls try to hit a

dummy while they are blindfolded and others in the valley of Teotitlan, also in Oaxaca, play their own version of musical

chairs, a boy flies a kite in Balk, Afghanistan, and laughing children play at being the wolf and the sheep, the latter role played

by a little boy who always escapes. His work is delightful. Life throbs in these local games which have a universal sense.

In 2010, in Afghanistan, in the valley of Bamiyan, near the Buddhas sculpted in the rock which were destroyed by the Taliban,

Francis Als filmed some children rolling bicycle and car tyres (perhaps in the past they would have been cart wheels) along

with a stick. A year later the game took a different form when, instead of tyres, other children rolled two reels of film along in

Kabul. They were small format reels with the film running between them, as if in a projector, and the sequence is recorded in

Reel-Unreeel; Perhaps because he was aware of its unique nature and powerful meaning, Als did not include it in Children's games, although it is closely related to it. The boys' trajectory lasts nearly twenty minutes, during which we can think many things and see many others, as the boys roll the reels past.

I thought of the employees of the Kabul National Film Archive (and Als makes it clear that he also thought of them). Using

all their ingenuity and risking their lives, they saved part of the country's film heritage by hiding many copies of films that the

Taliban would have burnt. One of the reels in Reel-Unreel pays out the film and the other winds it up. Some frames are burnt just before one of the reels is lost, when it rolls off a hillside, but the other reel is saved. I also thought how the audio-visual

industry, adopting digital images, has decided to stop making celluloid films, so that a whole legacy of films in the original

format will not be playable and many film makers (and artists, although this is not the case of Als) will not be able to

continue using photo-chemical techniques, and their tangibility, their colour quality and their texture will be lost. Watching

the children playing with it, I thought of celluloid as waste. I also thought that we do not know what images are contained in

the reels they roll along. Do they document reality? Do they record an imaginary world? What do the images think? Their

invisibility invites us to imagine them. We also project our imagination onto the films we see. We cannot see everything and

not everything is made visible. There is always a reverse field, images that are missing. As always, there is a dark side, as in

the pictures that the children are peering at near the end of Francis Als's film.

One child says that in the pictures the people look as if they are locked up. What does cinema lock up? Does a film mirror the

reality surrounding us? Or do its images, because they are images, transform reality? Cinema, through the tension between

reality and imagination, activates the unconscious and stimulates thought: it invites the spectator to believe in images and at

the same time to doubt them. As in games, the frontier between truth and falsehood, reality and fiction, is blurred. However,

there are images produced in the audiovisual world, largely intended for television, which are imposed on us as "the truth"

and require us to believe that they show the world as it is, even when they often constitute a simulation, illustrate a

supposition, simplify events or try to manipulate the viewer.

We also project our imagination onto

the films we see. We cannot see everything

and not everything is made visible

Have the images of Afghanistan broadcast via the media allowed us to see

the reality of the country, the life of its inhabitants, beyond the idea presented

by news of the Taliban, the war and the invasion? Following the children who

roll the reels of film through Kabul, from the hillside down to the bustling

urban plain, Als shows us images of the city that we may not have seen,

while he invites us to think about the nature of an image, between what is

real and unreal.

In Reel-Unreel we see the children pushing the reels along, accompanied by others who play, run and laugh, but who also watch the surveillance

helicopters flying over the city, one child framing them with his fingers. We

see mudbrick houses on the slopes of the hills and dusty, stony paths along

which a flock of sheep pass while people walk, cycle or ride donkeys. There

is a man selling balloons, as if in a film by Panahi or Kiarostami, and a little

girl who smiles, holding two of them. The ground is littered with rubbish

and there is a feeling of uncertainty between the buildings and the ruins.

Cars drive along the road near a bustling market. We also see some boys

playing football and one is struck by the fact that there are very few women

to be seen. In these images, which follow a path, recording the life found

there, each of us can see and imagine other things, like the people who are

"locked" in the pictures. As Francis Als reminds us, in a sentence shown

at the end,

"Cinema: everything else is imaginary".

Imma Merino

Film critic

Have the images of Afghanistan broadcast via the media allowed us to see

the reality of the country, the life of its inhabitants, beyond the idea presented

by news of the Taliban, the war and the invasion? Following the children who

roll the reels of film through Kabul, from the hillside down to the bustling

urban plain, Als shows us images of the city that we may not have seen,

while he invites us to think about the nature of an image, between what is

real and unreal.

In Reel-Unreel we see the children pushing the reels along, accompanied by others who play, run and laugh, but who also watch the surveillance

helicopters flying over the city, one child framing them with his fingers. We

see mudbrick houses on the slopes of the hills and dusty, stony paths along

which a flock of sheep pass while people walk, cycle or ride donkeys. There

is a man selling balloons, as if in a film by Panahi or Kiarostami, and a little

girl who smiles, holding two of them. The ground is littered with rubbish

and there is a feeling of uncertainty between the buildings and the ruins.

Cars drive along the road near a bustling market. We also see some boys

playing football and one is struck by the fact that there are very few women

to be seen. In these images, which follow a path, recording the life found

there, each of us can see and imagine other things, like the people who are

"locked" in the pictures. As Francis Als reminds us, in a sentence shown

at the end,

"Cinema: everything else is imaginary".

Imma Merino

Film critic

The Taliban and the War Against Art

In recent decades Afghanistan has been the focus of a great deal of international attention, from the Soviet invasion, which

unleashed the Russian-Afghan war of 1978-1992, up to the civil war which brought the mujahideen to power after the

departure of the Soviets. As the conflict continued, one group began to make its presence felt: the Taliban. They began to

capture territory in 1994 and in 1996 they entered Kabul. The Taliban obsession with the strict application of the principles of

Islam, as they understood it, led them to plunge Afghanistan into deep obscurity.

Any artistic expression was declared haram, and banned. In their obsession with Islamic correction, "the destruction of vice and the cultivation of virtue", culture was severely punished. As well as blowing up the ancient statues of Buddha in the

province of Bamiyan, as an indication of the prohibition of images and the human figure, they attacked museums, banned

music, films and television, the holding of traditional festivals and forbade men to shave. Museums, schools and cinemas

were closed and films, books and records were burnt. Women were forbidden to work, leave the house if not accompanied

by a man, study, wear make up or high heels, lean out of windows and even laugh loudly!

After the attacks on New York and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, another war began, the war on terror, terrorists and

the terror of the Taliban. In October 2001, the bombing of enemy positions began. It was first thought that the Taliban had been

defeated but they hid, rearmed and reorganised, returning with renewed strength, ready to take control of the country again.

The international community, for its part, tried to create a state out of nothing. Elections were held, a Parliament and

provincial governments were set up, and a new army was formed.

But numerous problems have persisted. Life for the population is difficult, with a lack of employment opportunities and a

feeling of uncertainty about what will happen when foreign troops are withdrawn in 2014. Poverty and corruption are

widespread. Those in power continue to use strong-arm tactics with an impunity endorsed by the new pseudo-democratic

system. Decaying social and cultural structures, the mediaeval nature of rural life, with subservience to local warlords and

criminals, hinder social mobility and the application of justice. The lack of economic resources, monopolised by those who

have always controlled them, condemns ordinary people to bare subsistence.

Ana Ballesteros Peir

PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies

Neither has there been much progress in national integration. Afghan society continues to be controlled by religious groups,

tribal leaders, ethnic groups, local warlords, former mujahideen, and the Taliban, while the country's political structure

continues to foster polarisation along ethnic lines: Pashtun, Hajik, Uzbek, Hazara, Baloch and others. Although various

political parties are registered, their lack of prestige after the fierce fighting before Kabul was taken by the Taliban meant

that when elections were called they were based on individual candidacies rather than parties. There are hardly any

common ideologies or projects and tribal and local loyalties are perpetuated. Perhaps the only thing that unites Afghans in

the street is the desire to avoid war and establish peace.

Women have made a little progress since 2001 but their situation is still deplorable. Weighed down by the yoke of tradition,

they are the weakest social group. A great majority of Afghan women suffer domestic violence and other types of abuse. The

social data are shocking. With a female literacy rate of 12.6% (the figure for men is 43%), Afghan women are condemned to

remain invisible. The high birth rate (2.25% per year) means that each Afghan woman has an average of 5.5 children. The

youth of Afghan society is also striking: the average age is 18 years. Bearing in mind that it is the fourteenth poorest country

in the world, it is not surprising that two children out of every four are involved in child labour. Unemployment, the high birth

rate, the youth of the population, the lack of economic resources, together with rigid social norms, are signs of a dangerous

cocktail.

The future that awaits Afghanistan when foreign troops withdraw is unknown. The most pessimistic anticipate a panorama

of civil conflict, although optimists hope that Afghans will be able to move ahead without another war. In any case, the Afghan

people have no alternative but to endure patiently the harsh reality of their lives.

Perhaps the only thing

that unites Afghans in the street

is the desire to avoid war and

establish peace

The Taliban and the War Against Art

In recent decades Afghanistan has been the focus of a great deal of international attention, from the Soviet invasion, which

unleashed the Russian-Afghan war of 1978-1992, up to the civil war which brought the mujahideen to power after the

departure of the Soviets. As the conflict continued, one group began to make its presence felt: the Taliban. They began to

capture territory in 1994 and in 1996 they entered Kabul. The Taliban obsession with the strict application of the principles of

Islam, as they understood it, led them to plunge Afghanistan into deep obscurity.

Any artistic expression was declared haram, and banned. In their obsession with Islamic correction, "the destruction of vice and the cultivation of virtue", culture was severely punished. As well as blowing up the ancient statues of Buddha in the

province of Bamiyan, as an indication of the prohibition of images and the human figure, they attacked museums, banned

music, films and television, the holding of traditional festivals and forbade men to shave. Museums, schools and cinemas

were closed and films, books and records were burnt. Women were forbidden to work, leave the house if not accompanied

by a man, study, wear make up or high heels, lean out of windows and even laugh loudly!

After the attacks on New York and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, another war began, the war on terror, terrorists and

the terror of the Taliban. In October 2001, the bombing of enemy positions began. It was first thought that the Taliban had been

defeated but they hid, rearmed and reorganised, returning with renewed strength, ready to take control of the country again.

The international community, for its part, tried to create a state out of nothing. Elections were held, a Parliament and

provincial governments were set up, and a new army was formed.

But numerous problems have persisted. Life for the population is difficult, with a lack of employment opportunities and a

feeling of uncertainty about what will happen when foreign troops are withdrawn in 2014. Poverty and corruption are

widespread. Those in power continue to use strong-arm tactics with an impunity endorsed by the new pseudo-democratic

system. Decaying social and cultural structures, the mediaeval nature of rural life, with subservience to local warlords and

criminals, hinder social mobility and the application of justice. The lack of economic resources, monopolised by those who

have always controlled them, condemns ordinary people to bare subsistence.

Ana Ballesteros Peir

PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies

Neither has there been much progress in national integration. Afghan society continues to be controlled by religious groups,

tribal leaders, ethnic groups, local warlords, former mujahideen, and the Taliban, while the country's political structure

continues to foster polarisation along ethnic lines: Pashtun, Hajik, Uzbek, Hazara, Baloch and others. Although various

political parties are registered, their lack of prestige after the fierce fighting before Kabul was taken by the Taliban meant

that when elections were called they were based on individual candidacies rather than parties. There are hardly any

common ideologies or projects and tribal and local loyalties are perpetuated. Perhaps the only thing that unites Afghans in

the street is the desire to avoid war and establish peace.

Women have made a little progress since 2001 but their situation is still deplorable. Weighed down by the yoke of tradition,

they are the weakest social group. A great majority of Afghan women suffer domestic violence and other types of abuse. The

social data are shocking. With a female literacy rate of 12.6% (the figure for men is 43%), Afghan women are condemned to

remain invisible. The high birth rate (2.25% per year) means that each Afghan woman has an average of 5.5 children. The

youth of Afghan society is also striking: the average age is 18 years. Bearing in mind that it is the fourteenth poorest country

in the world, it is not surprising that two children out of every four are involved in child labour. Unemployment, the high birth

rate, the youth of the population, the lack of economic resources, together with rigid social norms, are signs of a dangerous

cocktail.

The future that awaits Afghanistan when foreign troops withdraw is unknown. The most pessimistic anticipate a panorama

of civil conflict, although optimists hope that Afghans will be able to move ahead without another war. In any case, the Afghan

people have no alternative but to endure patiently the harsh reality of their lives.

Perhaps the only thing

that unites Afghans in the street

is the desire to avoid war and

establish peace

Antwerp, Belgium, 1959. Life and Works in Mexico City.

Francis Als studied Engineering and Architecture at Antwerp and History of Architecture in Venice. In 1985 he moved to

Mexico City to participate in reconstruction work after the city was hit by an earthquake. It was there that he discovered his

artistic leanings and settled there, as he was attracted by the city's strong personality. He had grown up in the country and

felt the big city was a vast territory that he could explore while remaining unnoticed, impelling him to respond.

Als brings a poetic and imaginative sensitivity to contemporary art. With his slow-paced, critical view he develops a

narrative based on his concern with social, economic and anthropological matters.

His works reveal cities through the eyes of a neur (stroller). The artist uses walking to record the nature of each place and situation, capturing the way in which the city breathes with what happens there, how the people living there move and react.

He steps back to act as an observer who questions his surroundings to highlight what is irregular despite its everyday

nature.

Francis Als works with a range of supports and materials: photography, action, sculpture, installations, painting, drawings

and animation, slide shows, and videos, many of which feature the artist himself. He bases his work on metaphorical themes

and resources, including the city itself, games, animals in the street, the border, immigration, poverty, violence and

brutality. The artist describes his own work as "a sort of discursive argument composed of episodes, metaphors, or

parables."

His work is on display in museums and art collections around the world. He has held major exhibitions in centres such as the

Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, the Reina Sofia Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City, the Kunsthaus

in Zrich, New York's MOMA, and Tate Modern. He has taken part in leading international events such as the Biennials in

Havana (2000 and 1994), Venice (2007, 2001 and 1999), So Paulo (2010, 2004 and 1998), Shanghai (2002) and Istanbul (2001

and1999). As part of DOCUMENTA 13 (2012) he exhibited a selection of paintings in Kassel and, in Kabul, a secondary venue

for the biennial, he presented the video REEL-UNREEL. He is represented by the Peter Kilchmann Gallery in Zrich and David Zwirner Gallery in New York.

Francis Als

http://www.francisalys.com

Antwerp, Belgium, 1959. Life and Works in Mexico City.

Francis Als studied Engineering and Architecture at Antwerp and History of Architecture in Venice. In 1985 he moved to

Mexico City to participate in reconstruction work after the city was hit by an earthquake. It was there that he discovered his

artistic leanings and settled there, as he was attracted by the city's strong personality. He had grown up in the country and

felt the big city was a vast territory that he could explore while remaining unnoticed, impelling him to respond.

Als brings a poetic and imaginative sensitivity to contemporary art. With his slow-paced, critical view he develops a

narrative based on his concern with social, economic and anthropological matters.

His works reveal cities through the eyes of a neur (stroller). The artist uses walking to record the nature of each place and situation, capturing the way in which the city breathes with what happens there, how the people living there move and react.

He steps back to act as an observer who questions his surroundings to highlight what is irregular despite its everyday

nature.

Francis Als works with a range of supports and materials: photography, action, sculpture, installations, painting, drawings

and animation, slide shows, and videos, many of which feature the artist himself. He bases his work on metaphorical themes

and resources, including the city itself, games, animals in the street, the border, immigration, poverty, violence and

brutality. The artist describes his own work as "a sort of discursive argument composed of episodes, metaphors, or

parables."

His work is on display in museums and art collections around the world. He has held major exhibitions in centres such as the

Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, the Reina Sofia Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City, the Kunsthaus

in Zrich, New York's MOMA, and Tate Modern. He has taken part in leading international events such as the Biennials in

Havana (2000 and 1994), Venice (2007, 2001 and 1999), So Paulo (2010, 2004 and 1998), Shanghai (2002) and Istanbul (2001

and1999). As part of DOCUMENTA 13 (2012) he exhibited a selection of paintings in Kassel and, in Kabul, a secondary venue

for the biennial, he presented the video REEL-UNREEL. He is represented by the Peter Kilchmann Gallery in Zrich and David Zwirner Gallery in New York.

Francis Als

http://www.francisalys.com

Reel Unreel

Managed and curated: Carme Sais

Production: Farners Cabra

Communication: Rita Andreu and Diana Sans

Administration: Airusa Aguilera

Graphic design: Babooh! Disseny i publicitat

Image documentation: ngrid Riera and lex Casas

Texts: Ana Ballesteros and Imma Merino

Other texts: Carme Sais

Exhibition mounted by: Xavier Torrent and Anna Ribas

Organisation and production:

Sponsors:

In association with:

With the support of:

Legal deposit: GI.1358-2013

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich

Reel/Unreel, 2011In association with Julien Devaux and Ajmal Maiwandi

Kabul, Afganistan

Video documentation of an action, color, sound, 20 minutes

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich

Reel Unreel

Managed and curated: Carme Sais

Production: Farners Cabra

Communication: Rita Andreu and Diana Sans

Administration: Airusa Aguilera

Graphic design: Babooh! Disseny i publicitat

Image documentation: ngrid Riera and lex Casas

Texts: Ana Ballesteros and Imma Merino

Other texts: Carme Sais

Exhibition mounted by: Xavier Torrent and Anna Ribas

Organisation and production:

Sponsors:

In association with:

With the support of:

Legal deposit: GI.1358-2013

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich

Reel/Unreel, 2011In association with Julien Devaux and Ajmal Maiwandi

Kabul, Afganistan

Video documentation of an action, color, sound, 20 minutes

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich

Plaa de Santa Llcia, 1 17007 Girona

Wednesday to Sunday and public holidays 11 am 2 pm and 4 pm 6 pm,

29th October, 1st and 3rd November 11 am 2 pm and 4 pm 9 pm

Closed: Monday and Tuesday and 24th, 25th, 26th and 31st December, 2013 and 1st January, 2014

Blit_Oficines

Pujada de la Merc, 12 2n 17004 Girona

972 427 627

info@bolit.cat

www.bolit.cat @arts_giArts Girona

23 October 2013

to 4 January 2014

Blit_StNicolau

Reel UnreelFrancis Als