NB! “The Quiet Volume” is an audio-sensory journey for two participants at a time, that takes place at Tallinn University Academic Library (Rävala avenue 10):
16+18+22+23.08 between 14:00-16:00, entrance for 2 persons every 20 min (last admittance 16:00).
17+21.08 between 14:00-18:00, entrance for 2 persons every 20 min (last admittance 18:00).
You can choose a suitable time when buying from Piletilevi.
The Quiet Volume is a whispered, self-generated and 'automatic' performance (Autoteatro) for two at a time, exploiting the particular tension common to any library worldwide; a combination of silence and concentration within which different peoples' experiences of reading unfold.
Two audience members / participants 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.
"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
""The Quiet Volume", this small play by Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells leading a spectator into the world of books, is 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. (...) It offers a kind of instruction for how to become blind: effectively nothing other than the careful readjustment of sight. Here it works most beautifully, because the direction of viewing or thinking suggested to the spectator via headphones and text always works both internally and externally, focussing on the material objects just as much as on the clusters of thoughts to which they are attached." Doris Meierhenrich, Berliner Zeitung, 20.09.2010
Ant Hampton is a British artist and performance maker whose work, which began in 1998 under the name Rotozaza, has most often involved guiding people through unrehearsed performance situations. From 2007 this started to include the audience: his Autoteatro series tours widely and includes Etiquette, The Quiet Volume, Cue China, OK OK, This is Not My Voice Speaking and The Extra People. Ant often collaborates with other artists, including Tim Etchells, Christophe Meierhans, Britt Hatzius, Gert-Jan Stam, Ivana Müller and Anna Rispoli.
www.anthampton.com
Tim Etchells is an artist and a writer based in the UK whose work shifts between performance, visual art and fiction. He has worked in a wide variety of contexts, notably as the leader of the world-renowned Sheffield-based performance group Forced Entertainment. Exhibiting and presenting work in significant institutions all over the world, he is currently Professor of Performance & Writing at Lancaster University. Etchells’ work has been shown recently at Tate Modern, Cubitt, Hayward Gallery and Bloomberg SPACE in London, at Turner Contemporary, The Grundy and Compton Verney in the UK, at Witte de With, Rotterdam, and MUHKA (Antwerp).
timetchells.com
