Ant Hampton & Rita Pauls
Ant Hampton (UK / DE, b. 1975 CH) makes performances which often involve a tension between structural elements that are fixed and indeterminate experiences to be lived and negotiated in the moment. Since 1999 he has explored a strategy of guiding people through unrehearsed performance situations: early stage-works developed to include the audience themselves, in often small-scale and intimate formats. More recently his practice has been marked by a step away from the idea of art as a safe or autonomous space.
Rita Pauls, born in Buenos Aires in 1993, is a performer and a writer. In her work she explores language, intimacy and the search for non-controlled performative situations. She has collaborated with artists in the performing arts field such as Federico León, Dora García, Paula Salomón, Dudú Alcón Quintanilha and Manuel Abramovic. Currently, Rita Pauls is working on a Public Assembly of Wandering and Translation along dancer Florencia Carrizo and researches Becoming Animal, an upcoming essay-film.
Ant Hampton and Rita Pauls want to learn German. They hitchhike through Germany and ask everyone the same question: “What do you think should be said? They bring the answers to the stage as a performance. In “Mund-Stück,” Hampton and Pauls experiment with the process of adapting to a new culture and how the process can hold up a mirror to that culture. “Mund-Stück” is their defiant and crude attempt to integrate themselves, driven by urgency, curiosity, friendship and their own history.
