DYAD
2014/2015, Performance cycle in nine parts
Interested in what divides and separates us, and how divisions are applied socially and politically as mechanisms, VestAndPage look into the dangers of dichotomy, attachments to dualism, and the paradox of Ego. Through a series of poetic bodily images, they question how polarities are being employed as effective tools of ideology, propaganda or collective manipulation. Each episode starts with the above quote and a conflictive moment between a mouse and a rabbit, both burrowers and symbols of mediation, procreation and vulnerability.
The performance cycle has been developed and presented on VestAndPage's 2014/2015-tour with stations in Toronto (Black and White), Amsterdam (One and Two), Zagreb (You and Me), Leipzig (Past and Present), Sokołowsko (Liquid and Solid), Bristol (Full and Empty), Aberdeen (Inside and Outside), and closed in a 15-hour durational performance in Moscow (Open and Closed).
DYAD I and II: Black and White
hub14, Toronto, ON (CA)
Two 2-hour performances on the occasion of LONG-TERM by LINK&PIN Performance Series, curated by Adriana Disman and Sandrine Schaefer, co-presented by FADO Performance Art Centre
12 - 13 April 2014
Realised with the kind support of Suanne McGregor
Photographs by Henry Chan and Sandrine Schaefer
Video captured and edited by Sandrine Schaefer
"Andrea Pagnes is blindfolded and seated at a small table. He’s working with a lit candle and writing with a long feather plume, inked in his own blood. Verena Stenke, his partner, is across the room: falling flat as a plank, straight down towards the floor, catching herself each time at the last moment… her nose, just inches from the hard wood. Andrea is in the mound of broken glass, now. He holds larger mirror pieces across his shoulders and chest, like wings. He walks across the glass and the sound is visceral. The glass cracks and pops under his footsteps, his red blood streaking across the translucent slivers and shards.
Adriana Disman, “Towards Anti-Disciplinarity, the (messy) hermeneutics of self-violent performance art,” Theatre Research in Canada #36.1
DYAD III: One and Two
Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, NL
Two-hour performance on the occasion of FLAM V - a week of performance art, curated by Rose Akras and Dirk Jan Jager
13 May 2014
Photographs by Jaco Idema and Loreto Gilbert
DYAD IV: You and Me
Theatre &TD, Zagreb, HR
On the occasion of Perforacije Festival, curated by Zvonimir Dobrovic
27 June 2014
Photographs by Darko Vaupotic
DYAD V: Past and Present
Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig, DE
In occasion of Blauverschiebung, presented by Galerie KUB, curated by Franziska Eissner and Christian Liefke
16 October 2014
With the text Geister ohne Heimat by Kassim Bayatly (Duhok, Iraq)
in a German translation by Verena Stenke
Photographs by Dirk Baumanns, Anika Preissler and Galerie KUB
DYAD VI: Liquid and Solid
Grunwald Sanatorium, Sokolowsko, PL
1-hour performance in occasion of Konteksty 5 - Festival of Ephemeral Art, curated by Malgorzata Sady
19 July 2015
Photographs by Dominik Jedliczka, Agata Mielnicka, Norbert Wawrzyniak
DYAD VII: Full and Empty
Arnolfini, Bristol, UK
2-hour performance on the occasion of IPA Performance Platform, curated by Fay Stevens
23 October 2015
Photographs by Jürgen Fritz and Fay Stevens
DYAD VIII: Inside and Outside
Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen, UK
2-hour performance on the occasion of This Is Performance Art (TIPA), curated by Nikki Milican
31 October 2015
Photographs by Kathryn Milne and Dragica Soskic
VestAndPage ended this remarkable event by putting their own bodies on the line, enduring physical attritions while a voice-over intoned the clauses of the UN’s bill of human rights. When, finally, Pagnes walked barefoot over shards of glass – it cracking like bones under his feet – it came like an act of voluntary penance in memory of those victims of carnage the world ignored in life and is quick to forget in death.
Mary Brennan, “Tragedy adds poignancy to thought-provoking art,” The Herald
DYAD IX: Open and Closed
Solyanka State Gallery, Moscow, RU
Three performances of 5 hours each on the occasion of PYRFYR - German Performance Art Season, curated by Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich and Margarita Osepyan
5 - 6 - 7 December 2015
Photographs by Igor Chernyshov and Margarita Osepyan
Video captured by Igor Chernyshov and edited by VestAndPage