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From June 1 to July 5, 1997, Francis Alÿs traveled from Tijuana to San Diego without crossing the US-Mexico border. The thirty-five-day journey, circumnavigating the globe, was the central component of The Loop, the artist’s project for INSITE97.

Francis Alÿs’ project The Loop embodies, to a large extent, the philosophical and conceptual thinking that has defined his work as an artist for the past three decades. The Loop, generally depicted as a journey around the world to avoid crossing an international border, has manifold components that expand the project’s scope into other concerns which are not necessarily a result of his “maximum effort, minimum result” 1990s precept, but more to the artist’s physical and sensitive relationship with the places he visits, the people he meets, and the political settings that underlie the contexts he is confronted with during his travel. Evidence of this are the different materials that were generated during this journey: a diary and a set of hand drawn postcards that were sent to art critic and historian Olivier Debroise (1952-2008) in which he briefly described his daily routines and impressions of different cities, photographs, maps, drawings, and journal notes.

Duration: 5 min.