danzon_eng

© Joana Linda What is the essence of performance in your opinion? First of all we need to say that we don’t have any special skill to answer questions that are simultaneously general and profound. And even less in such a short time. Most of our answers to these questions are just commonplace. Where we think we may have something to say (slightly different from everyone else) is in our performative work. And even there we don’t know. Having said that, we can start… Before we used to say that our mission was to act, not necessarily to change or maintain a reality, but to reveal it in the sense of finding “images” for certain sensations, emotions or ideas for which they had not yet been found. You know when you’re reading a text or a poem and you say “oh, it was exactly what I was feeling but I hadn't found the words yet”. Well, in our work we are just trying to find forms for things we feel but for each we still don’t have the words or the gestures or the images. We just finished say...

In this series of interviews we try to get to know the artists who will be the guests at the  Arter ’s Performance Programme  in Spring 2020. Our next guest is Ant Hampton. Ayse Draz, Art Unlimited Performing Arts Editor & Mehmet Kerem Ozel, Writer [The Turkish translation of this interview is published and can be accessed on art.unlimited ] Ant Hampton, Photo: Britt Hatzius  What is the essence of performance in your opinion? How do you define contemporary performance today? There’s a great, small text in Tim’s book ‘Certain Fragments’ called ‘On Risk and Investment’ which I think goes a long way towards getting at the essence of what performance is or should be. The rest of the book is also fantastic and has always been, for me, the most useful writing in this regard. As for contemporary performance today, I prefer to see it as undefined and continually in flux. Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How? I can only really give personal exa...