Francis Alys in Artforum

jess: Bridge-Puente by Francis Alys caught my attention because of the odd look of a row of boats anchored in a single line out to see that reached the horizon with the fishermen still in them. This piece is about Alys' ongoing interest about the persuit of the horizon. He has looked at this idea in several other works but to tell u the truth this is the only one that really interested me. In this piece Alys organsed 2 groups of fishermen to row their boats out from two locations one in Havana, Cuba and one from Florida, USA. Each group of boats anchored in a row directly out from the shore so as to draw a direct line between these two locations. Altoether 150 boats were involved. People from these locations then moved out on to the boats until they reached the end and the boats then moved away again. I thought this was a really cool idea because of the idea of seeing and aerial view of the boats from the two locations and the line being attempted to join them. I also just thought the idea of seeing a long line of boats from the shore to the horizon was a really cool idea because it almost gives a feeling that the boats need to be attatched to the shore some how even though we kno they are capable of being isolated from the shore. Apart from the interesting aesthetics, Alys' intentions for this piece were about teamwork and trying to link the Cuban and American communities. Although this idea is corny i like the idea of a large group of people working together to make this piece over such a large scale is pretty cool as it is not a scale or materials you would usually think of using in an artwork. Artforum May06, page 260