Ant Hampton 

Ant Hampton is a performance maker whose work plays with the tension between liveness and automation. For over 20 years, he has brought together and guided diverse performers through unrehearsed performance situations. Since 2007, he has experimented with involving the audience themselves into this method within structures loosely defined as Autoteatro, usually involving small-scale, sometimes site-specific formats. 

His performances sometimes require no one to travel, a lived experience which inspired his recent advocacy and research project, ShowingWithoutGoing.live in collaboration with Caroline Barneaud of Théâtre de Vidy-Lausanne. This atlas started with an initial aim to collect examples of how live performance work can travel and be experienced / performed without the artists being physically present. His most recent works no longer negotiate art within a safe or autonomous space, but instead encourage the audience to take risks themselves, with real consequences. One example is the 'automatic workshop' The Thing, co-created with Christophe Meierhans, and specially presented in this kick-off edition of the IETM Green School.