Since 2006, VestAndPage - Verena Stenke and Andrea Pagnes – have developed a transdisciplinary artistic practice at the intersection of performance art, filmmaking, artistic research and curatorial practice.

 

Their site-responsive work approaches sites as active collaborators, among others, in clinical, military, subterranean, polar or seismic environments. Their practice unfolds through long-term relationships between bodies, places and histories, and focuses on art's liminal, spectral, and ritual nature. Their backgrounds in Applied Theatre create space for co-creative, inclusive, and participatory processes with people of different backgrounds and abilities, and their academic methods, paired with somatic and mystic practices, allow them to establish non-canonical epistemological values.

 

Their work has been presented worldwide at exhibitions, festivals and conferences, from month-long performance walks over 5 days or 24-hour durational performances to temporary 'artistic visitations'. They have received various recognitions, scholarships, fellowships and support, including the Robert Schuman Silver Medal for European Unity (1990), the AIR Taipei Fellowship (2011), and the Best Film award at the Berlin Independent Film Festival (2018). Their work has been presented internationally across Europe, Asia and the Americas, including at the Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, Museo Universitario del Chopo Mexico City, Museo de Arte Tigre Buenos Aires or the European Cultural Centre in Venice.

 

Alongside their artistic practice, VestAndPage are the founders and artistic directors of the Venice International Performance Art Week, an independent platform dedicated to the exhibition, production, research and transmission of performance art. Since 2012, the project has brought together pioneer and emerging performance artists through exhibitions, live programmes, and residency formats.

 

Their work is featured in various publications, including The Routledge Companion on Performance and Science (2026), Provocations on Home, Place and Belonging Through Arts-Based Research (2026), or RosaLee Goldberg’s seminal The Art of Performance (German edition, 2014). Their co-authored articles have appeared in books, magazines, and journals of contemporary art, including Performance Matters, Performance Research, Undercurrents Journal of Critical Environmental Studies, Journal of Embodied Research, and Ephemera Journal. Their own publications, published by VestAndPage Press, investigate the intimate fabric of artistic practice.

They are lecturers and mentors in Performance Practice and Artistic Research at institutes of higher education in Europe, including the Master's Home of Performance Practices at ArtEZ University and Accademia Unidee. They were visiting artists-researchers at New York University Abu Dhabi, the School of the Arts Institute, Chicago, and the Norwegian Theatre Academy. They care for providing accessible and inclusive workshops and pedagogies, and are experienced in coordinating EU- and national-scale funded projects,

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VestAndPage's art practice is site-responsive to critical natural surroundings, social contexts, historical sites, public spaces, and architecture. They uncover layers of imagery stored in human and beyond-human bodies and milieus, examining layers of trauma, memory, and the vulnerability of the individual and the collective within social and environmental spheres. They enact endurance, pain sublimation, and risk-taking as a poetic, bodily approach to art practice. VestAndPage's works draw on material from experiential and genetic archives, accessed through insightful thinking and embodied spiritual practices.

 

VestAndPage have been devoted to performance-based filmmaking through which they examine the evolution from original documentation of performative acts toward non-linear storytelling. They produce film works on-site as visceral performances in response to critical sites. In a reflexive search for new images of interior landscapes, they treat the world as their studio and host. They do not go to a place to tell a story but to find its story. Since 2010, they have produced three feature-length films, a silent film, a trilogy of shorts, two shorts and numerous interview series and art videos.​

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Between 2010 and 2012, Stenke and Pagnes worked extensively in Antarctica, South America and Asia. They produced performance cycles and the performance-based film trilogy sin∞fin, and strengthened their international network.

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Since December 2012, VestAndPage have been directing and curating the live art exhibition project VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK. Between 2012 and 2016, the project showcased in the Trilogy of the Body historic pioneer works on exhibit in conjunction with live programs, presenting over 200 international artists and an ongoing educational program. Since 2017, the Co-Creation Live Factory and the yearly Summer Class have served as international educational platforms with residential character.

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Between 2014 and 2018, alongside further annual live performance cycles, VestAndPage produced Plantain, the award-winning feature-length film based on the month-long performance walk from Northern Germany through Poland to the Russian region of Kaliningrad. The autobiographical project is based on the historical events of Stenke's family's escape during the civil exodus from former East Prussia in the winter of 1945.

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Since 2019, they have been presenting the autofictional performance piece on tuberculosis and the body as a home of pathogens, 1 9 Monologue.

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In 2020, they published their manifesto on performance-based filmmaking: Poetics of Relations.

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Since 2020, alongside further performance and short film creations, they have been presenting momentum, a mnemonic archive for testimonial purposes, presenting conversations with inspiring people from the arts, culture and science on existential topics.

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From 2021 to 2024, they produced the performance-based feature STRATA, a film and practice-based research project on Deep Time and layers of memory in human history and geology, in prehistoric UNESCO World Heritage caves of the Swabian Jura, where, through international collaborations and interdisciplinary processes, science meets the performing arts.

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Since 2025, they have been engaged in the practice-based research project Visiting Immune Places, in which they investigate, through site-responsive performances for film, how the spectres of tuberculosis persist in bodies, sites, and archives at former Central European sanatoriums.

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Born into the triangle of a WWII concentration camp, a secret Cold War nuclear storage site and a pollutant-contaminated salt mine, German performance artist and filmmaker Verena Stenke (she/they) made critical sites and bodies the focus of their art. As a doctoral researcher in Artistic Research at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna (MUK), they research performance art, trauma and hauntings in public space, and embodied and situated narratives of tuberculosis. They hold an MA in Performing Public Space from Fontys Academy of the Arts, received professional training in Applied and Physical Theatre in Italy, and are qualified as a Special FX Makeup Artist and mask maker. For decades, they have been integrating mystical and somatic practices through practices in the traditions of Sufi performance, yoga, and martial arts. They are further dedicated to film production and collaboration formats.

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Venetian-born artist-researcher, writer, and curator Andrea Pagnes (he/him) holds degrees in Philosophy and Modern Literature, certificates in Museology and Art Criticism, diplomas in creative writing, and is an actor and Applied Theatre operator. He is a certified practitioner of Transpersonal Rebirthing and has been working as a writer, visual artist, glass sculptor, artistic director, independent curator, and coordinator for various Venice Biennale exhibition projects. As the editor-in-chief of Performing Ethos: International Journal of Ethics in Theatre & Performance (PEET) and co-founder and artistic director of the Venice International Performance Art Week, he is dedicated to producing, researching, and publishing on inclusive and ethical performance practices, collaborative pedagogies and co-creation formats, and performance art legacies.

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