Dribbling the Field conflates the action of dribbling in a soccer game with the experience of finding one's way in the city. Clearly, both experiences are distinct in character, but they share a similar set of rules that organize and control the range of activities permitted in their respective fields. What this project proposes is a rearticulation of some of these prescriptive codes. Differently from the soccer player, the city player runs backwards. This simple reversal complicates the experience and reveals the artificial uniformity that stems from the everyday use of the city. It also allows the body to create other rhythms out of its newly gained inadequacy.

Red Sculpture, video still from dvd video, 2003
Round Facade, video still from dvd video, 2003
Seaport Overview, video still from dvd video, 2003

Featured
Kjetil Røed, Dekonstruksjoner av byrommet (Oslo: Kunstkritikk, February 18, 2005)

Dribbling the Field, 4 min video, sound, dvd video, 2003 | 1 min excerpt

The video Irrational Intervals dwells upon those rare moments when, in the fast-moving life of the city, the body is temporarily at rest. The work depicts the common practice of "smoke breaks" - a short break in the workday taken to smoke a cigarette. It focuses on the correlation between these breaks and the empty pockets in architecture that are sought by smokers to avoid pedestrian traffic. Outside the work site and apart from the continuous flow of the street, the smoker occupies a zone of indifference between two distinct spheres and their respective codes: the one that regulates behavior in the workplace and the other that organizes pedestrian flows on the street. Intervals between activities do not exactly take place outside the normative processes that shape everyday life but the slight misalignment that occurs where these codes intersect provides an opportunity to disrupt their formative influence.

Geometric Composition Wall, video still, variable dimensions, 2002

Irrational Intervals, 8 minutes, silent, video, 2002 | 1 min excerpt

Featured
Banai, Nuit. Siting the Everyday, in New Views(New York: LMCC/WFC, 2003) pp.6-11

In contrast to the invisible horizontal line drawn by everyday movements in the city, this video shows a person in search of vertical deviations from this norm. Several situations depict attempts to move up in spaces like a bus stop, a telephone booth, a building marquee, cracks on a wall that lead to a window, among others. The character of the actions varies from that of a playful childish game to a teenage prank to a burglar break-in to a protester stunt; that is, activities that have in common the pursuit of unusual routes of action.

Green Façade, video still from DVD video, 2002
Phone Booth, video still from DVD video, 2002
Brick Wall, video still from DVD video, 2002

Upward Mobility, 8 minutes, silent, video, 2002 | 1 min excerpt

Featured
Barnett, Erin. Alex Villar interview, in Upward Mobility (New York: New Museum, 2004)
Villar, Alex, Andrea Kroksnes, Miho Shimizu and Oyvind Renberg. Dialogical Encounters #1, de-tour at uks exhibition brochure-poster (Oslo: UKS/Office for Contemporary Art, 2005)
Villar, Alex and Oyvind Renberg. A Conversation (London: Online Printhouse, 2002)
Villar, Alex and Simon Sheikh. A Conversation (New York: Danger Museum/Apexart, 2003)
Villar, Alex and Moira Roth, Minding the Gap (New York: Online Printhouse, 2003)

Temporary Occupations depicts a person running on the sidewalk in New York while ignoring the city's spatial codes and therefore resisting their effects upon the organization of everyday experience. The clips in the video register situations of temporary invasion and occupation of private spaces located in a public setting. The action simply articulates the continuity of these spaces with the remaining areas from which they were extricated, drawing attention to, and possibly subverting, the boundaries that demarcate them.

The installation recreates the situation the video depicts. Two parallel fences divide the space of a rectangular room. Both fences stop before meeting one of their walls, allowing the viewer to pass through the relatively narrow space between the two fences. The video is projected onto one of the fences, on rear screen material. The other fence is covered with a translucent black netting material. The video can be seen from the tree sides of the fences. First mediated by the obstruction caused by the netting, then very clear but too close and finally at an optimum distance but flipped because projected from the back. This projects of detours in the viewing of the piece allow the viewer to negotiate a balance between the intellectual and performative dimensions of the experience.

Fence, video still from video, 6 min, silent, 2001
Narrow Gap, video still from video, 6 min, silent, 2001
Angled Gap, video still from video, 6 min, silent, 2001

Temporary Occupations, 6 min, silent, video, 2001 | 1 min excerpt

Featured
Diaz, Eva and Beth Stryker, Mind the gap (New York: Smack Melon, 2006)
Villar, Alex and Katya Sander. Temp Occupations and Other Double Binds (Luneburg: Revolver, 2003)
Villar, Alex. Other Ways and Temporary Occupations (Amherst: ReMarx, Vol. 14:3, Fall, 2002)
Johnson, Nato and Greg Sholette, eds. The Interventionists: Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life (North Adams: MIT, 2004)

Outerplace, makes use of the language of science-fiction to tap into the immediate reality of Groebelingen, Bremen, a working class neighborhood in Germany on the verge of socio-economic change given the construction of a sci-fi themed mall complex. Two main interventions characterize this collaborative project: a poster and an installation. The poster invites people to 'act normal' in the imminence of an on-themaking sci-fi film; it was posted throughout the city preceding a projects of interviews with local inhabitants, community workers and reporters. The installation, a four-flights-tall scaffolding structure, proposed an alternative access to the Lichthaus building; it also hosted a sci-fi themed cinema in the building's bathroom.

Please Act Normal poster, 36 x 48 inches, inkjet print, 2001

Installation evening view, 4 flights tall scaffolding and blue netting, Lichthaus, Bremen,
Germany, 2001

Installation daytime/inside view, 4 flights tall scaffolding and blue netting, Lichthaus, Bremen, Germany, 2001

Featured
Iris Hetscher, Kein Aliens in Gropelingen (Bremen: Weser-Kurier, June 17, 2001) p.11.
CK, Auch die Zukunft hat eine Zukunft (Bremen: Taz Bremen, June 19, 2001) p.23.

This video shows someone walking continuously through a variety of underground spaces, all located in the subway system in New York City. The person shown in these actions follows a contrary orientation. What is depicted is the pursuit of spaces that exist on the edge of the rational logic that administers life in the city. This piece dwells on dead space and time, the portion of the day when one lives between places.

Other Ways Installation at UKS, Oslo, Norway

Other Ways, 5'30'' minutes, silent, video, 2000 | 1 min excerpt

Featured
Røed, Kjetil. Dekonstruksjoner av byrommet (Oslo: Kunstkritikk, Feb 18 2005)
Villar, Alex, Andrea Kroksnes, Miho Shimizu and Oyvind Renberg. Dialogical Encounters #1, de-tour at uks exhibition brochure-poster (Oslo: UKS/Office for Contemporary Art, 2005)
Gorczyca, Lukasz. Hybrydy z Ameryki (Warsaw: Raster Art Magazin, Apr 2001)
Siepen, Nicolas. Der Blick in den Raum der Stadt (Berlin: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jun 20, 2001) p.BS4
Leeb, Susanne. Sally Gutierrez und Alex Villar (Berlin: Text Zur Kunst, NR43, 2001)
Kern, Kristine. Tag Trapperne (Copenhagen: Politiken, Jun 22, 2001) p.8
Smith, Roberta. As the Chelsea Art World Expands, a Host of Visions Rush In (New York: New York Times, Friday, Jun 1, 2001) p.E2
Villar, Alex and Oyvind Renberg. Interview (Oslo: Online Printhouse, Aug-Nov 2001)

This video documents a person's attempt to enter a vacant building through a small opening in a window's guard. This is a crossing of a threshold that separates the interior and private space of a building from the exterior and public space of the street; i.e., a move from the outside toward the inside. The subject of this experience is trying to find a way into a space without open doors, a recurrent circumstance in a world characterized by continual migrating flows.

Between Places, 10 minutes, silent, video, 1999 | 30 sec preview

Alternative Access concentrates on the officially defined boundaries of Highbridge Park in New York City. The work is comprised of finding and experiencing alternative points of access to the park, especially those already in use by people who frequently visit the park. These experiences were registered photographically and presented to the park visitor in the form of an official-looking info map.

Sign installation at Highbridge Park, Manhattan, New York, US, 1999
Sign, inkjet print mounted on wooden board, 50 x 80 inches, 1999
Kneeling, photograph, variable dimensions, 1999

Sliding, photograph, variable dimensions, 1999
Squatting, photograph, variable dimensions, 1999

Featured
Sheikh, Simon. Counter-public works: re-mapping public space (Dublin: Printed Project,
Sep, 2003) pp.37-42
McDonald, Jillian. Art in the Park, in Mess: The Stuff that Really Surrounds You (Toronto: Tart Magazine, issue 7, Aug 1999) p.31

Other Spaces consists of a projects of performative interventions in outdoor urban spaces. In the specific context of New York City, a place in which so-called public spaces are thoroughly administered, there are many spaces that are not completely subjected to control. Some are temporary and circumstantial; others are the result of prolonged decay. For this project, I have focused on small, body-scaled, negative architectural spaces.

Fire Alarm, c-print mounted on aluminum, 36 x 48 inches, 1997-98
Handrail (neck), c-print mounted on aluminum, 36 x 48 inches, 1997-98
Corner, c-print mounted on aluminum, 36 x 48 inches, 1997-98
Banister, c-print mounted on aluminum, 36 x 48 inches, 1997-98
X-door, c-print mounted on aluminum, 36 x 48 inches, 1997-98
Window, c-print mounted on aluminum, 36 x 48 inches, 1997-98
Hydrant, c-print mounted on aluminum, 36 x 48 inches, 1997-98

Exhibitions

Press

Based on a play by Bertolt Brecht, and likewise, this piece takes the school as the site of questioning. The focus of the story is a short dialogue that takes place between a teacher and his students at the crucial moment when a question of life and death is asked. There is a critical problem with the posing of the question as it provides a framework that ultimately determines the answer. Through a projects of performative displacements of the expected relation between the body and supporting furniture, the stakes of each character are literalized, expoising the discursive apparatus that frames the discussion.

Der Jasager (excerpt), 11 minutes, sound, DVD video, 1997-02
Der Jasager (chair), 36 x 48 C-print mounted on aluminum, 2002
Der Jasager (table a), 36 x 48 C-print mounted on aluminum, 2002
Der Jasager (table b), 36 x 48 C-print mounted on aluminum, 2002
Der Jasager (table c), 36 x 48 C-print mounted on aluminum, 2002