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The On Stage Experience

One of the Futures…

‘This is a world’s first which is you’re having this experience which we call the On Stage Experience John and this is the very first time that this has been done live.’

New website

www.anthampton.com

If you can link to / forward / help get it around, most grateful.

Thank you!

Some of the Futures, Some of the Pasts

More coming soon, – at last – but please if you’re in UK and at all interested or involved in contemporary performance, come along this weekend. Nb. this is actually happening (unlike True Riches). FUTURES & PASTS

A long weekend of Live Art at the ICA, curated by Tim Etchells. 21-23 May 2010 “I worked with Ant Hampton last year to produce a provocative virtual season of events for the ICA when they closed their Live Art department, so it’s an odd thing to be invited into an institution of which one has been publicly critical of. However the chance to help hold the doors of the ICA open to Live Art for a while is too good to miss, especially considering the ICA’s historical role as an important supporter of live work.” Full info here

Chez Booz

I’m in Colorado Springs presenting Etiquette alongside Silvia’s piece Wondermart and my collaboration with Sam and Joji, GuruGuru. The space the organisers here (Caitlin Green and Drew Martorella) have sourced for the latter is fairly breathtaking. We usually aim for something modern, antiseptic – something a little unnerving which might feed into the dehumanized, focus-group world the piece plays off, but here it’s something special. The group of five enters the building – one of only three tall office blocks in the whole town – and goes to the 11th floor in an elevator playing panic-inducing footage from The Weather Channel. They exit into a brightly lit lobby area with fake plants and a sign on the wall indicating these are the offices of a very large (and controversial) US Military Intelligence contractor.

Next to their sign is one for GuruGuru, so instead of going into their offices they go the other way and open a door into a gigantic and entirely empty space offering a floor-to-ceiling panorama of the nearby Colorado Rockies. Cheyenne mountain, one of the closest, contains the famous NORAD compound, a nuclear bomb-proof Bat Cave which has been the central command of all North American defense (including Canada) since its construction in 1958.

This is the view of the mountain from the window of our space. Click for big.

This enormous empty office-space is one of several gathering spots for the group en-route to the smaller room where the action actually takes place. Inspired as it is by Adam Curtis’s incredible documentary ‘The Century of the Self’, I can’t help but feel GuruGuru has really found it’s place here, enjoying a view onto NORAD, sharing the floor with intelligence contractors, FBI bureaus two floors above and something called GIPSA or JYPSA a few below (I think they’re also federal agents, but the friendly security guard who took us onto the roof said the doors don’t open on the 8th floor, they have their own security, he doesn’t know what it stands for and hasn’t asked…) Coming up in the elevator I also can’t help noticing some of the characters standing there, so still, avoiding eye contact with anyone and pretending not to listen to the Weather Channel: this one is focussed, muscular, close-shaven, his huge neck ringed with heavily starched collar, the line of it continuing straight into the sides of his shaven head, a horizontal indent between eye and ear betraying long hours involving close-fitting eyewear of some kind. I can’t stop thinking about system failure, the ‘bungles’ of GuruGuru overlapping with the near apocalypse-triggering mistakes that took place within that mountain, twice, 30 / 31 years ago.

No this is not part of the play

Someone in Canada contacted us with an unusual question regarding Etiquette (Rotozaza) >

“From reading what the play is about it appears as though the audience interacts during the play. I am looking to propose to my future wife and was hoping we can work that into the play. It would make for a memorable moment for all involved. Kindly, could you please help me in making this happen?”

We replied explaining he should maybe try and fit it in towards the end… we didn’t know what more we could say really. Anyhow he wrote back the other day:

“Good day Great People, Thank you very much, it was a great success!!! First and foremost P said YES. She was taken by surprise and loved the proposal. Thanks to the Etiquette team; the play is very unique and entertaining concept. This is how the proposal went; at certain times during the act I was adding my own lines talking about P. It was hilarious she thought it was part of the play. E.g. I would start lines off with her name and finish with I love you P…. During the time when I was meant to drip water on her palm I wrote on the note pad #Will You Marry Me# folded that, wrote on the outside open at the end…and placed in her palm. She thought it was part of the play. At the end of the play with my headset on, I asked to open it and she read it. She thought it was part of the play and was like are you serious. I took my headset off and went over to her side of the table went down on one knee pulled the ring out and said “No this is not part of the play. Will you Marry Me?”…. she said YES YES YES.”

Through another’s eyes

An addict in the area described in the last post approached me offering to draw my portrait. I told him i only had 2 dollars and he said fine no problem, smashing what remained of his green pencil (overused, chewed) into the page and immediately crushing the lead to bits. ‘Awww you got a pen man, i need a pen…’ – I told him he could have it. His portrait, which I think is quite amazing for how it manages to look like both of us, was finished in no longer than 25 seconds. I don’t know if he’d have spent any longer on it if i’d given him $200 given the state he was in, but I only wish I could have sat down and had a conversation about what he’s doing, how people react etc. He managed to tell me he was happy for people to go away with their portraits. When I asked him what the folder full of dirty pages was, he said, well they’re the ones they didn’t want.

I was thinking of an experiment with Greg and Gemma as the Other People, where we charged £1 for a portrait done in 1 minute. Go here, scroll down to ‘Portraits in Puerto Banus: €1.00, One Minute’.

The Only Sea Foods

One of the biggest surprises for me here in Olympic-hosting Vancouver has been the incredible number of homeless drug users. The area around Chinatown along the 20 Bus route, specifically the street called East / West Hastings, is a strange place to be in 2010. It’s not just people on the verge of collapse; buildings and businesses too. ‘The Only Seafoods’ stands despondent, its window-sills scattered with dusty sea-shells and plastic replica fish, doors plastered with Closure Orders and the note below.

It’s the Push Festival, and for the opening a new version of Jerome Bel’s The Show Must Go On, with local Canadian performers, was staged at the brand new and badly-named “SFU Woodward’s Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre”  -surely the best first show you could hope to open a theatre with, the empty stage taking its time to transform from Darkness ‘Tonight… tonight’ to light (“the sun shines in”) to peopled (‘Come Together’). The theatre is part of a new development on the above West Hastings Street, and walking through the covered / shopping area, I was amazed to see one of the bravest and most fascinating works of public art I’ve ever seen. The large scale photo installation by Stan Douglas – on laminate glass lit from both sides – is a reconstruction of a riot on pretty much the exact same spot. The title: Abbott and Cordova, 7th August 1971. The subject matter reminded me of Deller’s Battle of Orgreave re-enactment, but above all left me wondering if there would ever be a situation in UK like this: of a development on this scale (multi-millions) in a troubled area allowing for the inclusion of an explicit reference to something at the heart of the problems it seeks to redress. So much easier to forget with the usual heavy dose of ‘glassitecture’, glossy brochure, shopping malls and huge banners with 20-something couples unpacking / reclining on their brand new floorboards, smiling at each other, fingers in mouths. More here on the brave decisions and, above all, history behind this amazing work. Click on images below for bigger versions.

The day before yesterday

here – needs full screen / hd on – quebec city 14 jan 2010

a 2 minute pause

Map Dream

This is a non-video response to Map Dream.

I’m in a hotel room with my parents and younger brother. My elderly dad and I are sat up in bed. Mum’s shouting from the bathroom, ‘what are we going to get him?’ – I think we’re going to a birthday dinner – and Dad shouts back, ‘I’ve got a great idea, let’s give him that book by Walter Benjamin’. At the time of this dream, maybe 5 years ago, I didn’t know anything about Benjamin, but now i like the idea that he was talking about a book as big as the Arcades Project (although I doubt he ever read it). Anyway, I ask him ‘why’ or something, and he’s about to reply when he notices an enormous map of the world printed on the duvet covering him there in bed. It pains me but I must admit I can’t remember why his interest increased – it would be easy for me to make up reasons, or try to connect it with the Benjamin thing – but what’s certain is that his fascination led to him slowly uncovering his legs as he pulled the map/duvet up to his eyes for scrutiny. I remember my brother and I agreeing that it was wonderful to see him so interested in the world, but that he should really try and stay warm all the same.