Ant Hampton / Time Based Editions

Time Based Editions is a series of books binding print to time, merging sound with paper: unique works by different artists. An audio track combines narration, soundscape, and instructions that guide you over a given time through a book. Audio and visual are separate elements here, held together in the present through a physical participation; turning, flicking and comparing pages, diving into a here-and- now of the page. This liveness can be amplified when experienced together as a group. In Kunsthal Extra City, there will be collective and synchronised engagements with the Borderline Visible book.

Borderline Visible begins as a journey from Lausanne to Izmir in 2022 made by two artist friends. One of them experiences health problems halfway through and has to stop. As the other continues towards Turkey, suddenly alone, the narration grows into a moving and troubled psychogeography. It shifts between “we” and “I”, present and past, piecing-together value and meaning from the very human ruins of aspiration, history, and language. Ant Hampton’s careful, at times miraculous, process of reconnection gradually lights up a constellation: voices and earthquakes, the Sephardic diaspora, tourism and forced movement, breakdowns and dementia, the end of the Ottoman Empire, swifts and swallows, Eliot’s The Waste Land and an urgent insight into hidden atrocities at the edge of Europe being funded from its centre. 

Ant Hampton (CH) is a British-German performance maker and writer. His work since 1999 has often involved guiding people through unrehearsed situations and interactive relations, using automated devices. His three collaborations with Tim Etchells are participative experiences for two at a time, combining audio with different engagements with the page: text and silent reading (The Quiet Volume, 2010); archive photography (Lest We See, 2015); and mark-making/ erasure (Not to Scale, 2020). In more recent years his practice has expanded into a wider investigation of risk-taking and leaps of faith, for example with The Thing – An Automatic Workshop in Everyday Disruption, created with Christophe Meierhans. These and many other of his “Autoteatro” continue to tour internationally in over 80 language versions. Together with David Bergé, he co-founded Time Based Editions in 2023.

Website

CREDITS

Borderline Visible (Lausanne – Izmir), 77 min, by Ant Hampton
published in 2023 by Time Based Editions a series directed by David Bergé and Ant Hampton
voice & sound, english version: Ant Hampton for all other language versions: com

feedback: David Bergé
book design: Roland Brauchli
copy editing and proofreading: Neil Bennun

Music: Perila, Oren Ambarchi
Fever, A Warm Poison; from the album In The Pendulum’s Embrace (2007) – by Oren Ambarchi
Corridor Between Days (2022) – by Perila
Quixotism Parts 1 and 2; from the album Quixotism (2014) – by Oren Ambarchi

created with support from: The Resonance Foundation (Los Angeles), Bimeras (Istanbul / Berlin), Théâtre Vidy (Lausanne), research facilitated by Lita House of Production / Beykoz Kundura (Istanbul), executive Financial

Management: Platform 0090 (Antwerp)

Based on a project conceived with Rita Pauls
with thanks to Pieter Ampe, Giorgos Antoniou, Sae Bosco and Samos Volunteers, Yannick Christian, Hani Dunia, Effi & Amir, Tim Etchells, Katy Fallon, Martin Hampton, Britt Hatzius, Leo Kay, LAPS, Camille Louis, Eva Neklyaeva, Beyhan Onur, Anelka Tavares, Prodromos Tsinikoris, Giulia de Vecchi, Anny Y