This website aims to pull together the various different strands, collaborations and projects encompassing Ant Hampton’ s work as an artist.
Bio -
Ant Hampton
he/him, b.1975, CH
Ant made his first works under the name Rotozaza - a performance-based project starting in 1998, which ended up spanning theatre, installation, intervention and writing-based works. His work, though varied in tone and content, has consistently played with a tension between liveness and automation. Most often, this has involved guiding people through unrehearsed performance situations, and since 2007 it has included the audience themselves within structures loosely defined as Autoteatro. Rotozaza became a partnership with Silvia Mercuriali, and ended in 2009 after their last production Etiquette, which was also the first Autoteatro work. Since then Ant has worked with Tim Etchells, Christophe Meierhans, Britt Hatzius, Gert-Jan Stam, Glen Neath, Joji Koyama and Sam Britton to create the works listed here which continue to tour internationally - over 60 different language versions exist of the various Autoteatro productions created so far.
His performances occasionally require no-one to travel; a paradoxical outcome (for an art committed to liveness and presence) which in turn informed his recent advocacy and research project, ShowingWithoutGoing.live
In more recently years his practice has expanded into a wider investigation of radical trust, risk-taking and leaps of faith, most obviously via the ‘automatic workshop’ The Thing. Starting 2018, an ongoing collaboration with Rita Pauls produced multiple iterations of the Mouth Piece project, as well as an in-depth workshop. In 2023 he launches Time Based Editions with David Bergé, a series of ‘live books’ combining print and audio.
Other solo projects include experimentation around 'live portraiture' as The Other People: structured encounters with people from non-theatrical milieu.
He was head dramaturg for 'Projected Scenarios' at Manifesta7 Biennial for Contemporary Art and often contributes to projects by others, including Ivana Müller, Anna Rispoli, Jerome Bel and Forced Entertainment.
Ant has also worked as coach / mentor for artist programmes such as MAKE (Ireland), A-PASS, Sound Image Culture (Belgium) and Dasarts (Netherlands) where together with Edit Kaldor he designed and mentored a 10-week block, ‘Every Nerve’. He has created and led workshops worldwide, including 'Fantasy Interventions - Writing for Site-Specific Performance', ‘Raising Voice in Public Space’ with Edit Kaldor and 'Mouth Piece Workshop' with Rita Pauls. His collaboration with Christophe Meierhans to create an ‘automatic workshop’ (The Thing) develops ideas behind Someone Else and his earlier work with Kaldor.
photo, Sanem Su Avci, 2023
DE
Die Arbeiten der britisch-deutschen Performancekünstlers Ant Hampton (*1975) sind trotz unterschiedlicher Inhalte immer gekennzeichnet von einer deutlichen Spannung zwischen strengen formalen und strukturellen Elementen und solchen, die im Moment der Aufführung gelebt und verhandelt werden. Aus seiner Strategie, Zuschauer*innen durch ungeprobte performative Situationen zu führen, entwickelte er in späteren Arbeiten kleinformatige, intime Projekte, die den Zuschauer selbst einbezogen, und in Cafés („Etiquette“) oder im Lesesaal einer Bibliothek stattfanden („The Quiet Volume“). Seine letzten Arbeiten verhandeln die Kunst nicht mehr innerhalb eines sicheren oder autonomen Ortes, sondern ermutigen das Publikum, selbst Wagnisse einzugehen, mit realen Konsequenzen ("Someone Else", "The Thing”).