Drawing from interdisciplinary theoretical sources and employing video-based, performative actions, installation and photography, I have developed a practice that concentrates on matters of social space. My interventions are done primarily in public spaces. They consist in engaging situations where the codes that regulate everyday activity can be made explicit. The body is made to conform to the limitations of claustrophobic spaces, therefore accentuating arbitrary boundaries and possibly subverting them. A sense of absurdity permeates the work, counterpoising irrational behavior to the instrumental logic of the city’s design.
Theoretical references range from extensive existing work on the problematic of space, especially the works of Foucault and de Certeau, which describe panopticon and heterotopic spaces as well as the potentialities for everyday re-writings of urban space. Aesthetic traditions foregrounding my work range from the sixties and seventies performative-based sculpture and installations by Helio Oiticica, Ligia Clark and Cildo Meirelles to the urban strategies of the Situationists and the anarchitecture of Gordon Matta-Clark. Like the in-between activities it seeks to investigate, my work lives between various fields: part nomadic architecture, part intangible sculpture and part performance without spectacle. Related Texts Renberg, Oyvind and Alex Villar. A Conversation about Alex Villar’s work (London: Online Printhouse, 2002) Sheikh, Simon and Alex Villar. A Conversation about Alex Villar’s work (New York: Danger Museum/Apexart, 2003) Stella d’Ailly and Aldy Milliken, Interview with Alex Villar (Stockholm: Iaspis, August 2007)
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