STRATA (2021)
Performance-based film
In production
The fifth performance-based film project by the duo VestAndPage deals with Deep Time and layers of memory in human history and the geological. In international collaborations and interdisciplinary processes, performance art, theatre, dance, visual art, and music meet science in human prehistory caves.
The production sites for this are the Swabian Jura caves, used by Ice Age humans for shelter about 33.000 to 43.000 years ago. The project brings together artists and researchers from the humanities, social and earth sciences to investigate the human body as a place in continuity with the geological. Body artists illuminate concepts of time and human and ecological intelligence in caves through performances for the camera. These body images –poetic and political at the same time– are nourished by documentary elements in conversations with specialists from archaeology, geology, speleology, art history, philosophy, and time psychology. Here, progress is imagined through cultural exchange and cooperation. Growing complexity is an evolutionary consequence, and plurality, the non-binary, and the social inclusion of diversity are seen as necessary prerequisites to serve the understanding and further development of life.
Intending to open up a contemporary discourse on the past, the project illuminates the challenges of the present's central social issues from artistic and academic perspectives. Questions are whether the geological separation between nature and culture can be overcome by changing bodies' views and how we can give visibility to deposits in the depths of the human being, in the earth and human history, and society and the psyche. We are concerned with strengthening the collective and ecological intelligence, contributing to the understanding of complex systems, and driving significant change through artistic production. The project is also the artistic questioning and critical confrontation with romantically distorted images of nature and naturalness. includes the other, the unknown, the new, the complex, the unexpected and change, requires a critical dismantling of consolidate narratives and aesthetics. To draft a possible design of a future, it is fundamental to work together in an interdisciplinary manner between people, and branches of the arts and sciences. The joint production process involves remembering and imagining real and possible worlds, while raising awareness of geological, political and evolutionary past and future. The participating artists embody the necessary principle of diversity: they are knowingly representative bodies that artistically reflect and question the layers of different cultures, societies, age groups, sexes, genders and physicality.
Come back to visit this site as we add content as it is being produced through the coming months.
Concept, Production, Artistic direction Verena Stenke, Andrea Pagnes (VestAndPage)
Director of Cinematography Verena Stenke
Text Andrea Pagnes
Production assistance Marcel Sparmann
Lighting director & Cinematography daz disley
Cinematography Fenia Kotsopoulou
Sound design & Audio arts Douglas Quin
Set director Giovanni Dantomio
Costume design & Masks VestAndPage, Balaustio
Artists
Aldo Aliprandi (Sound), Marianna Andrigo (Movement), Marilyn Arsem (Video & Text), Andreas Bauer Kanabas (Classical bass), Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro (Performance), Giorgia de Santi (Performance), daz disley (Sound), Francesca Fini (Performance & Digital animation), Nicola Fornoni (Performance), Saúl Garcia-López (Performance), Guillermo Goméz-Peña (Poetry) Stephan Knies (Violin), Fenia Kotsopoulou (Dance), Boris Nieslony (Performance), Ralf Peters (Voice art), Sara Simeoni (Dance), Marcel Sparmann (Performance), VestAndPage (Performance), Susanne Weins (Voice art), and more.
Scientific contributors
Prof Nicolas J Conard (Archaeology and prehistory), Kurt Wehrberger M.A. (Archaeology), Dr Stephanie Kölbl (Achaeology), Dr Bernhard Stumpfhaus (Art history), Prof Timothy Morton (Philosophy), Prof Nigel Clarke (Human Geography), Dr João Florêncio (History of Modern and Contemporary Art and Visual Culture), Dr Luke Jones (Time psychology), and more.
A VestAndPage production, Germany, 2021
Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner of Culture and the Media.
Realized in collaboration with Museum für Urgeschichte Blaubeuren, Museum Ulm, Cojote Outdoor, University of Exeter Research Network Rock/Body: Performative Interfaces between the geologic and the body, EntrAxis e.V., APS Studio Contemporaneo E.T.S., Live Arts Cultures.
With the support of UNESCO World Heritage: Caves and Ice Age Art of the Swabian Alb, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Baden-Württemberg, ForstBW, Stadt Blaubeuren, Stadt Schelklingen, Stadt Grabenstetten, Museumsgesellschaft Schelklingen, Urgeschichte Hautnah.
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Heilbronner Stimme, "Das Künstlerpaar VestAndPage produziert einen Performance-Film" (March 2021)
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Süd West Presse, "Dreharbeiten mit Künstlerduo – Cosmo-Hase erforscht die Unterwelt" (April 2021)
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Süd West Presse, "Von Kunst und Zeit im Ur-Opernhaus" (May 2021)
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Schwäbische Zeitung, "Hohle Fels: Wenn Kunst auf Wissenschaft trifft" (May 2021)
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SWR2 Kultur, "Kunst und Wissenschaft: Das Filmprojekt 'Strata' in den Höhlen der Schwäbischen Alb" (May 2021)
This project is supported by the Fonds Darstellende Künste
Take That Program #TakeAction
with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner
or Culture and the Media
