The Village draws its inspiration from the 1960’s science fiction television show The Prisoner, created in 1967 by actor/director Patrick McGoohan. The Prisoner depicted a dystopian community known as "the Village" which possessed a cheerful Disneyesque appearance that belied its function as a kind of Soviet Bloc society whose citizens are under constant surveillance. Assigned numbers in place of names upon their arrival, the identities of the Village residents are unknown to one another. With no way to determine whether one is interacting with a prisoner or guard, the residents acquiesce
into a resigned acceptance of their fate.

The show’s protagonist, Number Six, resists the complacency of his fellow citizens and surroundings, repeatedly challenging his captors while he attempts (sometimes elaborate) escapes, only to be returned to the Village in a kind of Groundhog Day-like existential recurrence. The real life town of Portmeirion in Northeast Wales where The Prisoner was filmed features eclectic, Italianate architecture by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis that anticipated postmodern design. The genteel, quasi-historical setting serves as an eerie backdrop to the show’s surveillance-laden environment from which escape has proven impossible.

Focusing on the inextricable link between site, architecture, and behavior, The Village investigates parallels between a fictional control society set in the Cold War era and contemporary modes of surveillance and "civic management" courtesy of both private and state sponsored actors.

Image: Jorge Rigamonti, Nueva York Sigue Creciendo [New York Continues to Grow], 1967.

The Village catalog

Press