VestAndPage's works range from live performance cycles and collective performance operas, over performance-based films, writings, poetry, and visuals, to temporary artistic community projects. They are currently developing the cycle of live collective performance operas HOME (since 2017) and momentum - a series of videos, in which they host conversations under existential focus with inspiring people from the arts, culture and science.
They are further developing 1 9 Monologue, an autobiographical performance text about the home of pathogens in the primate body on the example of pulmonary tuberculosis, and are in pre-production for STRATA, a performance-based feature documentary on Deep Time.
Below a selection of current and most recent works.
For selected past works, please visit here.
1 9 Monologue
2020/2021, Performance text
An autobiographical performance text about the home of pathogens in the primate body using pulmonary tuberculosis as an example. The own material of the experience flows into the work, while at the same time bridging self-observation with an historical and literary outside.
Home, Pandemic, Magic realism, Isolation, History, Body, Literature
1 9 Monologue
2020, Letters from isolation
While many in Europe consider it to be long since eradicated, it still presents the deadliest pandemic worldwide. In the Romantic period, it was epitome of muse and poetry and a popular motif in painting, literature and music. The talk is of tuberculosis. In July 2019, atypically, the young German artist Verena Stenke was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis. Her own experience of being as a body home to pathogens, flows into this autobiographical performance text, while building a bridge between precise self-observation and a global, historical and literary outside.
1 9 Monologue
Letters from isolation
2020
STRATA
2021, Performance-based film
Exploring memory layers and Deep Time in human history and the geological. In caves of human prehistory at the caves of the Swabian Alb, the project brings together artists and researchers from the humanities, social and geologic sciences to investigate the human body as a place that exists in continuity with the geological. Body artists illuminate concepts of time, past and modern human cultures through performances for camera in caves. These poetic body images are nourished by documentary elements in the form of conversations with specialists from the fields of archaeology, palaeontology, geology, speleology, art history, philosophy, and time psychology.
Art, Body, Geology, Time, History, Science, Documentary
STRATA
Performance-based film
2021
momentum
In development, Video series
Art, Documentary, Zeitgeist, History, Philosophy, Science, Dialogue
momentum
Video series
2020-ongoing
HOME
2017 - ongoing, Cycle of collective performance operas
In a time in which people continue to displace – forcibly or by choice – the current performance cycle of VestAndPage inquires into the concepts of Home and the ideal force of a community and sites of belonging, while at the same time questioning the precarious umbrella of state systems and norms that ascribe conventional meanings to both the collective and places. The chapters of HOME are developed through intensive co-creation processes with collaborating artists, presented as final collective performance operas. During these processes of production, we migrate towards ourselves and one another.
Poetics of Relations
A Manifesto on Performance-Based Filmmaking
Stenke, V., & Pagnes, A. (2020). Poetics of Relations: A Manifesto on Performance-Based Filmmaking. Journal of Embodied Research, 3(1), 3 (26:55). DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/jer.37
This video article expands upon the Poetics of Relations, the embodied research of VestAndPage (Verena Stenke and Andrea Pagnes), which informs their performance-based filmmaking theory and practice.
Embodied Practices, Filmmaking, Performance art, Manifesto, Geopsychology, Artistic collaboration, Socio-Cultural spheres, History, War, Environment
POETICS OF RELATIONS
Manifesto on
Performance-Based Filmmaking
2020
HOME
Performance cycle of collective performance operas currently in production
2017 - ongoing
In a time in which people continue to displace – forcibly or by choice –, culminating in a global lockdown due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the current performance cycle of VestAndPage inquires into the concepts of Home and the ideal force of a community and sites of belonging, while at the same time questioning the precarious umbrella of state systems and norms that ascribe conventional meanings to both the collective and places. The chapters of HOME are developed through intensive co-creation processes with collaborating artists, presented as final collective performance operas.
HOME
Cycle of collective performance operas
2017 ongoing
AMOR AND PSYCHE (In Times of Plagues)
2020, Short film, 9'24" min
A performatic approach to the chemical, physiological, psychological and spiritual aspects of Breath. Initially conceived during Stenke's own tuberculosis disease in 2019, the work has been resumed and actualized during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
AMOR AND PSYCHE
(In Times of Plagues)
Video performance poem
2020
ANAM CARA –
Mirror in the Mirror
2020, Film
(producer, writer, editor, performer)
A collective co-created performance-based film about the concept of home, as part of the HOME cycle of collective performance operas by and with VestAndPage and the Anam Cara Collective. Produced during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in April and May 2020, the film is a journey through an imaginary dwelling, a home of sorts.
Performance, Film, Home, Pandemic, Lockdown, History, Co-Creation, Collective
ANAM CARA – Mirror in the Mirror
Performance-based film
2020
Una per volta – Spinning, stirring, sweeping
Video performance
(Editor, Co-writer, co-director, co-performer)
A video performance response to the 1992-performance by MARILYN ARSEM, combining layers of the historic performance archive material with actions by Verena Stenke and Sara Simeoni in 2020.
Art, History, Crafts, Storytelling, Feminism, Magic, Mythology
Una per volta –
Spinning, stirring, sweeping
Video performance
2020
SIGNUM
2018, Short film, 33 min.
(producer, writer, editor, performer)
The artists undertake a quest for real and imaginary signs – words and poetry to be revealed, composed and transcoded by the same geological strata from which they emerge and disintegrate, once they come into touch with their mutable substance, the natural elements. Here both nature and human reasoning serve as a home, labour, or border and frontier. The artists' temporary presence is marked by the diagnostic features of sedimentary rocks, porous caves and stratified layers that reshape the landscape, along which they wander in search for expressions, languages to speak, envisioning connections to be made beyond what words can name.
Performance, Film, Semiotics, Nature, Strata, Geology
SIGNUM
Performance-based short film
2018
Plantain
[Spitzwegerich]
2018, Feature, 90 min
(producer, writer, director, performer) www.plantain-themovie.de
Award Winner: Best No-Budget Feature
Starting from their personal German family story, VestAndPage embarked in May 2015 on a month-long performance walk from Germany through Poland to the Russian region of Kaliningrad, to perform and film on location of true events of post-WWII displacements. In 7 episodes, the resulting feature-length art film questions oblivion through a series of poetic moving images.
Art, Biography, History, Philosophy, War
Plantain
[Spitzwegerich]
Feature film based on a month-long performance walk
2018
Venice International Performance Art Week
Since 2011
The live art exhibition project with residential character in historic Venetian palazzos conceived and curated by VestAndPage