Fri 8 - Sat 23 Apr

The Quiet Volume

by Ant Hampton & Tim Etchells

Bishopsgate Institute Library - April 8, 11-15
Hackney Library – April 16, 18-21, 23
Senate House Library - April 26-28, 30 May 3-4

The Quiet Volume is a whispered, self-generated performance for two at a time, exploiting the particular tension common to any library worldwide; a combination of silence and concentration within which different people’s experiences of reading unfold. Two readers sit side-by-side. Taking cues from words both written and whispered they find themselves burrowing an unlikely path through a pile of books. The piece exposes the strange magic at the heart of the reading experience, allowing aspects of it we think of as deeply internal to lean out into the surrounding space, and to leak from one reader’s sphere into another’s.

The Quiet Volume will tour a number of contrasting library spaces throughout London.

“Perhaps a book can be seen as the ultimate portable theatre or event space; a compressed, codified version of the ‘black box’ theatre or the ‘white cube’ gallery, flattened into white squares and black lines.” – Ant Hampton

“This now of the page is what grips me – the present moment, this one, summoned here with this arrangement of marks/code, ink/pixels, letters and words.” – Tim Etchells

Ant Hampton is a performance maker, writer and director. He founded Rotozaza in 1998, a project which has explored the use of instructions given to unrehearsed ‘guest’ performers, both on stage and, more recently, within more intimate structures sustained and played-out by the audience themselves: a project know as Autoteatro. www.anthampton.com

Tim Etchells is an artist working across performance, visual art and fiction. He has led Sheffield theatre company Forced Entertainment since 1984 and has worked artistically, critically and academically for institutions across the world. www.timetchells.com

“theatre of a very magical kind. A theatre of the gradual construction of thoughts whilst seeing, listening and reading. A theatre that pulls the world in and around, closer to and into the spectator, by making the very ability to read the world its thematic focus point.” – Berliner Zeitung

Performances are every 20 mins from 12pm, and lasts 50 mins

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE QUIET VOLUME IS AN EXPERIENCE FOR A PAIR.

The Quiet Volume can also be experienced in Spanish.

Senate House Library (4th Floor, Senate House, Malet St WC1E)

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Commissioned and produced in English, German and Spanish by Ciudades Paralelas a festival of portable theatre curated by Stefan Kaegi and Lola Arias, production management by Katja Timmerberg, developed in co-production between HAU Berlin and Schauspielhaus Zürich, commissioned by Kulturstiftung des Bundes, the Swiss Cultural foundation Pro Helvetia and Goethe Institute Buenos Aires. In coproduction with Vooruit Arts Centre, Belgium. Binaural recordings: TiTo Toblerone

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