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Francis Alys: When Faith Can Move Mountains (Spanish Edition)

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In 2002, 500 Peruvian volunteers, mostly students at the University of Lime, gathered in a long line by a giant sand dune on the outskirts of Lima. In the period after the end of the lengthy, troublesome autocracy of Peru's leader Fujimora, the tensions caused by his regime continued to unsettle Peruvian society. Many continued to feel anger over the violence and coercion of the Maoist Shining Path radical group. The largely-ignored poor were looking for answers to their conditions. Rival groups clashed in the streets of the major cities. And lawlessness was threatening to further fray Peru's historically-precarious social fabric.

In this atmosphere, the artist-activist Francis Alys got the idea for a large-scale community project--namely the moving of the mountain of sand. This impractical project was intended to be not only symbolic of the power of persons working together toward a goal, but also a model of a physically challenging activity to release pent-up angers and thwarted hopes and reorient these toward something productive. Alys' idea attracted much attention, and accomplishing its symbolic aim and immediate purposes. As the sand dune and the hundreds of volunteers moving it but a few inches around its edges were visible from the impoverished shanty towns set up by rural Peruvians fleeing Shining Path, the project's message was absorbed by this dislocated, restive population especially seeking new ideas, activities, and directions.

The planning, execution, and the intentions and hopes entailed in the impractical, encouraging outsized project are covered in the varied content of interviews with the project leaders, remarks by many of the student participants, and commentary by other activists and artists involved in different ways giving different perspectives. The many photographs and illustrations from topological drawings of the sand dune, the long line of volunteers at work, and faces of individuals convey the varied psychological, political, and social aspects of the imaginative project. A collage-like format represents the anomalies and multiple aspirations of this unique project with aspects of performance art and social ritual.