For Example A Critique of Never(1971) Shûsaku Arakawa

For Example follows a young child roaming around New Yorks Bowery, apparently drunk, homeless, and engaged in erratic and experimental movements. While documentary in style, the child is later revealed to be only an actor, the result is a complex document which questions the relationship between film and reality. The child conducts experiments between his physical body and the architectural space of the city, but as opposed to Why Not, For Example is concerned with public space rather than private. The ICC Report comments: The protagonist walks along the sidewalk as though dividing it into rectangles and circles, mimics the movements of a drunken man and practices peculiar skills with playground equipment which are physical explorations for a new arena for metalevelled meanings (or semantics) in these banal spaces. In this way, the film weaves what Arakawa calls a poetry of action, charting the constantly shifting relationship between a body and its urban surroundings.