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
momentum
In development, Video series (producer, director, writer)
Art, Documentary, Zeitgeist, History, Philosophy, Science, Dialogue
+ MORE
momentum
In development, Video series
Art, Documentary, Zeitgeist, History, Philosophy, Science, Dialogue
momentum
Video series
2020-ongoing
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
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.
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
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
Venice International Performance Art Week
Since 2011
The live art exhibition project with residential character in historic Venetian palazzos conceived and curated by VestAndPage
Venice International Performance Art Week
Live art exhibition project
2012 ongoing
SiO2 – The Reason of Fragility:
Contemporary Artists Facing Glass
2015, Exhibition project by VestAndPage
Albanian National Gallery of Arts, Tirana
With works by Marina Abramovic & Ulay, Chris Burden, Tony Cragg, Jan Fabre, Seamus Farrell, Joseph Kosuth, Armando Lulaj, Boris Nieslony, Yoko Ono, Jaume Plensa, Douglas Quin, Lawrence Weiner, Leonardo Cimolin, Dana Dal Bo, Andrea Morucchio, Nelda Ramos, Ermal Baboçi & Lindita Doçi, Klodian Deda, Eros Dibra, Oltsen Gripshi, Shqipe Jonuzi, Sead Kazanxhiu, and Ermela Teli.
SiO2 - The Reason of Fragility: Contemporary Artists Facing Glass
Exhibition project
2015
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
AEGIS
2016 - 2017, Performance cycle in 6 parts
The performance cycle inquires the protective qualities of living matter, defence functions, shielding systems, and aspects of security, questioning what are valuable and timeless protections and safeties. In each chapter of the cycle, the bodily symbolic acts are to honour a specific human trait and persons that embody it. It is accompanied by the reading of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the language of the place, and closed by members of the audience speaking their considerations voice-looped as the final Choir of Aegis. Developed and presented with the collaboration of other artists with stations in Santiago de Chile (Care), Istanbul (Dreams), New York (Courage), Uppsala (Hope), Piotrków Trybunalski (Equity), and Thessaloniki (Home).
AEGIS
Performance cycle
2016 - 2017
AEGIS
2017 Performance opera
YGGDRASIL comes as a hybrid theatre project combining experimental spoken word theatre and contemporary performance art. It layers texts (Kollektiv Phantomschmerz), installations and performance actions (VestAndPage), live soundscape (Marc Rossier) and light design (Viktoras Zemeckas). Starting from a contemporary Western confusion of rationality and absolutist ideas resulting in meaninglessness and detachment from our own mythological ritual roots, YGGDRASIL ventures into collective and individual believes. Inspired by the worldview of the Northern European mythology that once formed the base of a believe system, the work developed through the research of ritualistic practices from around the world.
Yggdrasil
Performance opera
2016
DYAD
2014 - 2015, Performance cycle in 9 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 employed as effective tools of ideology, propaganda or collective manipulation.
Developed and presented 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 Moscow (Open and Closed).
DYAD
Performance cycle
2014 - 2015
A Morphologic
Journey II
(On the borders of our bodies)
2014, Performance
Started in 2011 at KARST Gallery as a 3-hour performance in four episodes, the performance is inspired by the journey of Ulysses under the aspect of his encounters with a variety of women. Splintering impressions of encounters with archetypes of Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa and Penelope are guideline analogies of behavioural patterns of people on the run, men and women in search to forget, longing for union and something that may finally last. The performance continued with part II in January 2014 upon VestAndPage's return to KARST.
A Morphologic Journey II
Performance
2014
Topolino
A Globetrotter's Fairy Tale
2014, Silent video series
(producer, writer, director, performer)
A series of performance-based silent videos as work in progress shot at Mount Sodom, the Negev Desert, the Dead Sea, the Bosporus, Tuscany, the Chinese Wall, Glacier Perito Moreno, and Antarctica. Topolino is lost, lonesome and nostalgic, on his journey to extraordinary places. In a search for the myths that surround them, he entangles himself in failures and encounters first of all himself.
Adventure, Art, Comedy, Drama, Family
Topolino
A Globetrotter's Fairy Tale
Performance-based film
2014 ongoing
Thou Twin of Slumber
2013, Performance cycle in 8 parts
Inspired by J. S. Bach’s cantata Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, this cycle goes into death, sleep and slumber and liminal spaces, looking to wave mythical reflections on decay and rebirth into the narrative of urban regeneration. The moth is the animal totem of this cycle, and the single episodes are named after stages of its life cycle.
Developed and presented with stations in Boston (Caterpillar), Nicosia (Cocoon I, II and III), New York (Chrysalis), Istanbul (Pupae), Chicago (Histo), Vancouver (Hemolymph), Mexico City (In Situ), and Helsinki (Imago).
Thou Twin of Slumber
Performance cycle
2013
sin∞fin
Performances at the Core of the Looking-Glass
2012, Trilogy episode short, 45'42" min
(producer, writer, director, performer)
Produced in Antarctica, the concluding episode short of the sin∞fin trilogy engages through narratives on the comprehensive spheres of nature and the universe. The trilogy of art films of collaborative performances in epic locations around the world teeters between the real and the visionary and is amplified by the unfamiliar environments.
DVD | VOD | www.sinfin-themovie.de
Adventure, Art, Biography, Documentary, Drama, Environment, Science, Philosophy
sin∞fin
Performances at the Core of the Looking-Glass
Performance-based film
2012
FEAR vs LOVE vs FEAR
2013, Long durational performance of 24 hours
VestAndPage inhabit an empty house in Mexico City for the duration of one day and one night. Preceding the actual performance, VestAndPage held a 6-days intensive workshop with Mexico City street-girls, inquiring with them fears, desires and dreams. The video and text material, as well as puppets produced by the girls, are part of the performance installation. The project is inspired by a psychology theory stating that only two basic human emotions exist: Fear and Love, and that all other emotions are aberrations of one of these two.
FEAR vs LOVE
vs FEAR
Durational performance of 24 hours
2012
TERRA NOVA (AmundsenScottOates)
2012, Performance
TERRA NOVA (AmundsenScottOates) takes as an inspiration the lives and ventures of the Polar explorers at the beginning of the 20th Century, which VestAndPage studied in their artist-in-residence in Antarctica in January 2012. The performance ends with the famous last words of the British Antarctic explorer Lawrence Oates (1880-1912), said to his companions just before he walked out into a blizzard towards his self-sacrifying death during Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova Expedition.
TERRA NOVA (AmundsenScottOates)
Performance
2012
The Smile at the Top of the Ladder
2012, Performance
The Smile at the Top of the Ladder is a performance inspired by Henry Miller's book The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder, the touching fable of Auguste the clown, as well as a tribute to other clown figures of art.
Conceived for Ex Teresa Arte Actual's program The Sound of the Last Laughter, the performance develops around absurdity towards humour and sound. It sees Stenke sitting on a table suspended from the dome of Ex Teresa, continuously screaming "No No No No," while Pagnes fights with quotidian absurdism and failures.
The Smile at the Top of the Ladder
Performance
2012
Panta Rhei
2011 - 2012, Performance cycle in 7 parts
Panta rhei is the Greek expression for "everything flows." The cycle works on impermanent states and the concept of change and transformation, referring not only to the transitory states of matter, life and relations, but also to the temporary nature of thoughts and presumed orders. Is there something indefinite to cling to, when all is altered within the course of continuous evolution?
Developed and presented with stations in Singapore (Body), Thailand (Thoughts / Convictions / Relations), Taipei (Matter), Seoul (Time) and Hong Kong (Systems).
Panta Rhei
Performance cycle
2011 - 2012
sin∞fin Performances at the Holy Centre
2011, Trilogy episode short, 37'14" min
(producer, writer, director, performer)
Produced in Northern India and Kashmir, the second episode short of the sin∞fin trilogy highlights the sphere of society and religion. The trilogy of art films of collaborative performances in epic locations around the world teeters between the real and the visionary and is amplified by the unfamiliar environments.
DVD | VOD | www.sinfin-themovie.de
Adventure, Art, Biography, Documentary, Drama, Environment, Science, Philosophy
sin∞fin
Performances at the Holy Centre
Performance-based film
2011
Without Tuition or Restraint
2011, Long durational performance of 5 days and 4 nights
A durational performance experiment about the idea of freedom, in which Pagnes is jailed inside a dog crate in the gallery space for five days and four nights consecutively. Stenke is also closed inside the gallery, executing one durational action each day, and the gallery is open to the public during opening hours. The title of this performance are the conclusive words of a quote by Irish political theorist Edmund Burke, who argued in the 18th century that "freedom without wisdom and virtue is the worst of all evils, nothing but folly, vice and madness, without tuition or restraint."
Without Tuition or Restraint
Durational performance
of 5 days and 4 nights
2011
A Morphologic Journey I
(On the borders of our bodies)
2011, Performance
Started in 2011 at KARST Gallery as a 3-hour performance in four episodes, the performance is inspired by the journey of Ulysses under the aspect of his encounters with a variety of women. Splintering meetings with archetypes of Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa and Penelope are guideline analogies of behavioural patterns of people on the run, men and women in search to forget, longing for union and something that may finally last. The performance continued with part II in January 2014 upon VestAndPage's return to KARST.
A Morphological Journey I
Performance
2011
La Promenade du Sceptique
2011, Performance
The performance and its title are inspired by the 1747 book La Promenade du Sceptique by Denis Diderot.
La Promenade du Sceptique
Performance
2011
Mephisto Waltz
2011, Performance
The performance is based on the version Faust. Ein Gedicht by Nikolaus Lenau from 1836. The intensively corporal actions are accompanied by Mephisto Waltz #1 by Franz Liszt (1859), played in an adaption for violin by German violinist Stephan Knies. Serbian scientist Vedran Vucic created a unique design pattern directly out of the musical composition.
Mephisto Waltz
Performance
2011
Balada Corporal
2010 - 2011, Performance cycle in 4 parts
The cycle 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. This shall help to overcome the actual frozen state of being- not as a matter of nostalgia, but rather to ingrain poetry into life by re-evaluating the necessity of honest, direct and sincere human interchange.
Developed and presented with stations in Caracas (Solid Body - Emotional Body), Valparaiso (Liquid Body - Political Body), Valdivia (Aerial Body - Spiritual Body) and Buenos Aires/Vitoria, ES (Fragile Body - Private Body).
Balada Corporal
Performance cycle
2010
sin∞fin
Performances at the End of the World
2010, Trilogy episode short, 38'52" min
(producer, writer, director, performer)
Produced in Chilean Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, the first episode short of the sin∞fin trilogy focuses on the inner sphere of microcosm and the intimate domain of the individual and the couple. The trilogy of art films of collaborative performances in epic locations around the world teeters between the real and the visionary and is amplified by the unfamiliar environments.
DVD | VOD | www.sinfin-themovie.de
Adventure, Art, Biography, Documentary, Drama, Environment, Science, Philosophy
sin∞fin
Performances at the End of the World
Performance-based film
2010
Places to Fall and Rise
(Hyle & Hybris)
2010, Performance
A women's prison in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. The floor of the courtyard is painted with definitions: Place of Anger -– Place of You – etc. Upstairs, near the cells, the woman continuously dresses and undresses. Downstairs the man bashes a metal tube against the bars.
Those who would give up essential liberty
to purchase a little temporary safety,
deserve neither liberty nor safety.
– Benjamin Franklin
Places to Fall and Rise
Performance
2010
The Wedding
2010, Life project
The Wedding is a life project, started in April 2010 during the Holy Week of the Raramuris in the Mexican desert of Sierra Tarahumara. It consists of a series of ritualistic actions about the Union.
The stories of Love are stories of forms,
as every union is a formation of spheres,
and therefore creation of internal spaces.
– Peter Sloterdijk
The Wedding
Life project
2010
FRAGILE
global performance chain journey
The global art initiative started in 2010 aiming to make one fragile object travel one time around the entire globe, from hand to hand and from artist to artist. Over 750 artists from 75 countries and six continents had signed up to participate and create works of art with the fragile object about the fragility of life.
The project got suspended in 2012, as unfortunately the fragile object was no more retrievable upon a transition from one artist to the next.
More Info >
FRAGILE global performance chain journey
Global art initiative
2010
One Earth's Dreaming
2009, Durational performance and installation
One Earth's Dreaming works on the importance of communication, and the ritualistic aspects involved in facilitating it, as well as a personal version of bypassing alienation. One cannot be passive, cannot just sit and wait for everyone else to exorcise their fear of communication and hold back in the process of recreating unity.
You have already turned to become true.
While we remain still the same.
– Man to the Earth
One Earth's Dreaming
Durational performance and installation
2009
FRATRES
2009, Durational performance
FRATRES is a meditative performance for two performers and a violinist. In a closed dark room, nine guests at a turn take place on chairs placed in a circle. Connected by the luminescence of a long scarf, they become one single body of light. The violinist plays the composition based on the composition Fratres by Arvo Pärt, standing behind each of the persons for each of the nine segments of the composition. Only one light is placed at the end of his bow.
I could compare my music to white light which contains all colours. Only a prism can divide the colours and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener. – Arvo Pärt
FRATRES
Durational performance
2009
SUITEnovus
2009, Durational performance
SUITEnovus is a performance about angels, for one person at a time, in a hotel suite.
But a storm is blowing in from Paradise;
it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them.
– Walter Benjamin
SUITEnovus
Durational performance
2009
Crossing
2009, Video, 4'05" min
A journey through isolation and reflection with pathogens as mnemonics of Deep Time.
Colonize
Video
2009
Crossing
2009, Video, 2'51" min
Award winner: Culture Prize of the City of Nassau, Video Poetry Prize La Parola Immaginata
On a street corner that looks paved like a chessboard, people wander anonymously in opposing directions. They join each other and separate along two intersecting lines on the road, appearing and disappearing as if they echo the impermanence of life. There is a moment in which they double in perfect harmony, but direct communication is inexistent.
Crossing
Video
2009
Endangered Species
2008, Durational performance
Endangered Species: Instability. Immobility. Pagnes, covered by pearls and glass powder, lies on a bed made of 300 glasses. Stenke shifts the empty glasses on which his body is not lying, and removes pearls with her mouth from the skin surface. Each empty glass is filled with one pearl. As he finally raises up from the glasses, his back is covered with marks. The remaining glasses outline his body’s shape on the floor. He blows gold leaves, and they rest in an embrace.
Endangered Species
Durational performance and installation
2008
Speak That I
Can See You
2007, Durational performance and installation
Award winner: ArtKontakt Prize 2007
An interactive itinerary on communication. Voices speak in three languages a text about fear. At the center of the space, a body is offered as a canvas for thoughts. The visitors are invited to write with a feather or a nail on Pagnes' naked back. It derives a blood-like effect, but the action is smooth and gentle. Stenke cancels the word with water and collects the liquid in a glass container, labelling it with the actual written word. Inspired by the sentence attributed by Erasmus to Socrates: Speak, so that I may see you [Loquere igitur, in quit, adolescents, ut te videam].