By staging a reenactment of his own event, Francis Alÿs demonstrates how fiction can be used as a tool to subvert systems of power. After legally purchasing a handgun in Mexico City, he was filmed walking through the streets with the exposed weapon in hand. Alÿs wandered the streets for eleven minutes before being arrested by the police. Once he was released, Alÿs staged a reenactment of the previous day’s events. However, this time it was done in cooperation with the police. The footage from the original action and its reenactment are exhibited as a two-channel, synchronized video installation. Presented side by side, the two videos reveal that the state can endorse an action they themselves originally deemed punishable–the only difference is that one is real and one is reenacted. Alÿs thus uses the power of fiction, to hit at the deep hypocrisies of the state and its systems of punishment.