DESIRED CONSTELLATION
With Bettina Wenzel (Vocal Art)
Musei Civici,
Venice (IT) 2011.
MEPHISTO WALTZ
With Stephan Knies (Violin)
Spazio Thetis,
Venice (IT) 2011.
performance
TERRA NOVA (AmundsenScottOates)
OMISSIS Festival of Performing Arts,
Gradisca d’Isonzo (IT) 2012.
A MORPHOLOGIC JOURNEY (On the Boarders of Our Bodies)
Performance in three episodes for 3 hours.
Vessel Contemporary Art / KARST
Plymouth (UK) 2011.
LA PROMENADE DU
SCEPTIQUE
Academy of Arts, Venice (IT);
PPP Zentrum für Kulturproduktionen, Bern (CH);
Theater Academy Helsinki (FI);
Galerie KUB, Leipzig (DE) 2011.
THE BIRDS
With Mauro & Mathilde Sambo (Live Sound)
Spazio Thetis,
Venice (IT) 2010.
PLACES TO FALL AND RISE
Centro de las Artes, San Luis Potosi (MX);
Student Cultural Centre, Belgrade (RS) 2010.
SKIN DEEPER
With Barbara Kowa (Breath).
Neue Kunsthalle, Berlin (DE) 2009;
Royal Academy of Arts, Copenhagen (DK) 2010.
THE WEDDING
Life project.
Sierra Tarahumara (MX) 2010.
SUITEnovus
Performance in a hotel suite
for one person a time.
Grand Hotel Minerva, Florence (IT)
Hotel Mandarin Oriental, Prague (CZ)
2010.
FRATRES
With Stephan Knies (Violin)
For 9 persons a turn.
Tiyatro Z, Istanbul (TR) 2010.
ENDANGERED SPECIES
Frassinagiodiciotto,
Bologna (IT) 2009.
In.Sight.Out
Giardino del Guasto,
Bologna (IT) 2009.
PERFORMANCE CYCLES
Cycle in 7 parts | Asia | 2011/12
“Panta Rhei” is the Greek expression for “Everything flows”. The Performance cycle in seven parts has been realized 2011/12 touring Asia - with stations in Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong.
The work investigates the impermanent states and the concept of change and transformation, referring not only to transitory states of matter, life and relations, but also to the temporary nature of thoughts, convictions, systems and presumed orders. The question is if there is something indefinite to cling to, something undying to rely on, when all is altered within the course of continous evolution.
DURATIONAL WORKS
COLLABORATIONS
Performance-based movie trilogy | Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, India, Kashmir & Antarctica | 2010-12
sin∞fin The Movie is an artist film trilogy on Performance art- a movie out of any filmic genre, set between reality and vision. It has been realized through institutional co-productions in Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, India, Kashmir and Antarctica between 2010-12.
The trilogy project investigates performatically the concept of Spherology, and in its three episodes it focuses on the three basic spheres: in episode #1 Performances at the End of the World the actions reflect upon the inner sphere of the individual and the couple; then the bigger sphere of society and religion in episode #2 Performances at the Holy Centre; and the comprehensive outer sphere of nature and the universe in the final episode #3 Performances at the Core of the Looking-Glass.
Cycle in 4 parts | Latin America | 2010/11
Balada Corporal, Performance cycle in four parts, has been conceived for the Latin America tour 2010/11, and realized in Venezuela, Chile, Argentina and Brazil.
It speaks about the continuity of becoming, the difficulties of real encounters unleashing the physical boundaries of body surface, and transformation through concrete communication - physical, psychological, verbal and non-verbal. The visitors gather with the performers to re-awaken what is constitutional to all humans: the expressive power of body and language. These keynotes help to overcome the actual frozen state of being- not as a matter of nostalgia, but rather to ingrain pure poetry into life by re-evaluating the necessity of honest and sincere human interchange.
FEAR vs LOVE vs FEAR
24-hour performance
Proyecto Liquido / Alumnos47
Mexico City (MX) 2012.
WITHOUT TUITION OR
RESTRAINT
Performance of 5-days and 4 nights.
The Exchange Gallery
Penzance (UK) 2011.
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“
Stenke and Pagnes don't perform with a script. Granted, they've set coordinates for the show. They have chosen a space, and selected objects that are maximally efficient at conveying what they want to say. They have ideas about how they can interact with the space and the objects so that the audience leaves with a story. Still, there is no choreography, and what happens on opening day goes. If Pagnes struggles to free himself against restraints, that's real blood on his wrists and real pain on his face. Sometimes he gets free. Sometimes he doesn't. The China Post
“
In spite of currents, shamanic ecologies and surrealism, comes out a covert then increasing sensation of a pure, popular, irreducible sweetness. The sequences of pure flesh are exciting, epidermic, somewhat orthopaedically poetic, when inks are printed and objects rage onto bared skins, tightened with gauzes, shaken by subtle, imperceptible muscular spasms or signs. The letters, words, the writing itself is assumed as organic matter. And all this paraphernalia—always brilliant under the imprint of scenic invention—goes well with impossible landscapes, worthy of any words in spite of Chatwin. [...] After all that’s no coincidence, because if you investigate on Stenke and Pagnes, you come across a string of artistic experience ranging from visual art to performance, from poetry to sculpture, painting and dance. Gianluca Bassi, Leconte Editore
“
[In ‘Balada Corporal - Part IV’] VestAndPage bring the spectator to witness, in a sort of voyeuristic circus, their agreements, encounters and problematics within an action that doesn’t allow one to feel left outside. There is this constant fear of an accident in the air. Panic, yes, but at the same time there is the urging necessity to not loose one single detail of the movement. Just as if we watch a trapez artist falling from the heights into the arms of this partner. VestAndPage don’t work at heights. The vertigo comes from elsewhere. Santiago Cao in “Performances in closed spaces as shared intimacy”
“
‘Without Tuition or Restraint’ is devoted to a central concept of history - freedom - and works towards it from the opposite: unfreedom. Stenke and Pagnes are imprisoned. ‘What exists together influences and infects each other reciprocally, and creates something undefined new,’ says Stenke and is right. A view from the window is sufficient to establish this. In Penzance one needs to look inside the window of The Exchange Gallery to discover the world in miniature. Heilbronner Stimme
“
Featuring fog, debris, muck, viscous liquid, broken glass and burned plastic, ‘Vessel’ is full of references to impermanence, to liminal spaces and to shifting states. The opening-night performance by VestAndPage ‘A Morphological Journey (On the Boarders of our Bodies)’, on the evidence presented, successfully wove more visceral and mythical reflections on death and rebirth into the narrative of urban regeneration. Gabrielle Hoad, a-n The Artists Information Company
“
Stenke and Pagnes live performance art. They present meditative and ritualistic performances that challenge impermanence, transformation and self awareness. Their performances transfix me into an alternate state of awareness that is simultaneously terrifying and beautiful. Quin Dukes, The Artists’ Lists
SPEAK THAT I CAN SEE YOU
Durational performance and video installation,
2007-2010.
“
‘Speak That I Can See You’ examines, among others, the hollow actions, performed by millions with no identity just for the sake of comfort, and tells us that communication has become another one of them which needs to be reevaluated with a fresh eye. [...] Andrea Pagnes and Verena Stenke are here to tell us that real communication cannot be replaced by mechanical, mediated actions which have no relevance because they do not convey anything, and the need to exist as individual willing to open up and exorcise all fears is more acute than ever in the twenty-first century, in spite of all the cultivated illusion of the cocooned global village. Dana Altman in “Art & Multiplicity”
“
In ‘La Promenade du Sceptique’ man and woman slowly approach each other, find each other, and finally trust each other blindly. But the path is bloody and painful. Both figures appear fragile, as the woman stalks in high heels on broken glass pieces, whilst the man balances on them barefoot. Many look away when a long, genuine cut is made on his skin. Curious glances as the man symbolically subtracts his skin and hangs it on rusty nails. The intense performance happens almost in silence, except the man’s gasps during exhausting movements while under him the glass is breaking. Leipziger Zeitung
“
In the circumstance that VestAndPage create in their performance, the need to let go and do it is too strong, and the atmosphere too encouraging. There is no judgment, and there is in fact no direct request. There is just an opportunity to do, which is being provided in a conducive environment. Each one of us is handed a loose script and allowed, or more likely, encouraged and supported to improvise according to our personal horizon of expectations. The feeling of alienation is overcome by the ritual which seems strangely familiar, and which turns it into something else, more comforting. Dana Altman in “The Fall of Faust”
ONE EARTH’S DREAMING
798 Art District, Beijing (CN) 2009;
Grace Exhibition Space, New York (US) 2010;
Sarai Centre, New Delhi (IN) 2011.
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