This is for those who trust in change.
It is for the overstretched global bodies searching for a home or on pilgrimage.
For those to whom the surreal is familiar, those who dance on the limits hand in hand.
For those who go to spaces of hidden beauty and scan into the flesh of dream matter —
visionary poets, artists and people pushed by an urgency.
For those who reconcile with the mystery to let things coexist,
for anything that remains alone is just a nothing per se.
For those who listen, who seek to express, not to impress.
For those who take risks in the name of seeking new images.
For those journeyed through visible and invisible places,
real and imaginary places.
A nomadism aiming to empower one's art and openness,
leaving subtle traces, structuring temporary autonomous zones.
Taking action because each one of us has important stories to tell,
moving through generative inquiry and collective imaginings.
And again, "Remember all, forget all."
CURRENTLY, CALLS ARE OPEN FOR
September 14 to October 19, 2024
MASTERCLASS
Again in 2024, we will offer our 5-weekend masterclass
on performance-based filmmaking on five Saturdays between Sep 14 and Oct 19.
Registrations are now open until Sep 9.
April 20-26, 2025
WORKSHOP
"Arcana Portals" An intensive co-creation workshop on rites and rituals as performative experiences. Presented as part of CEREMONY, Future Ritual’s year-long programme exploring performance as a mode of gathering and communing in times of fragmentation.
June 12-22, 2025
C32 performingartsworkspace, Venice (IT)
WORKSHOP RESIDENCY
The VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK Summer Class returns to C32. /// SAVE THE DATE ///
We also offer
one-to-one artistic and professional MENTORSHIP
in online sessions – please get in touch about the details.
We support and aim to provide brave spaces, together with everyone involved, through a process of radical tenderness. We do not support and invite you to critically call out racism, ageism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia, as well as acts or expressions of oppression, colonization, and cultural appropriation. We come from Applied Theatre and have always been more interested in share-and-care and the beauty of our complex life stories than in technical virtuosities. Art acts for social inclusion and tolerance.
TYPES OF CLASSES
Since 2009, we have shared our pedagogy on collaborative performance-making through talks, lectures, seminars, practical and intensive in-person co-creation classes, online master classes and workshops, and individual mentorships.
We offer open-call classes and collaboration opportunities in the following practical ways, all of which provide a fertile ground for temporary artistic community building.
/IN-PERSON/ INTRODUCTORY WORKSHOPS
Our yearly practical introductory workshops are held with international open-call occasions to be announced.
Our practical in-person Introductory Workshops last 2 to 5 days and are open to artists and non-artists of all backgrounds and levels of experience. No previous experience in the arts is required. These practical workshops offer a way to approach the art form of performance art, body-based art practices in general, and VestAndPage's collaborative art practice.
/IN-PERSON/ INTENSIVE RESIDENCY CLASSES
Our yearly practical Intensive Residency Classes take place in early summer at Venice International Performance Art Week, C32 performingartworkspace, Forte Marghera, Venice (IT), and further international open call occasions to be announced.
In-person Intensive Residency Classes have a duration of 10 days and are residential, including shared accommodation. Intensive Residency Classes are open to emerging and established artists of all backgrounds and levels of experience who wish to challenge their practice further and collaborate with other artists expressively. You must provide extensive information about your artistic background and urgency and demonstrate a solid commitment to the immersive, collaborative 10-day artistic production process. The Intensive Residency Classes conclude in a final performance open to the public. These processes are usually accompanied and co-tutored by a team of associate artists to allow safe spaces during the intense working process.
/IN-PERSON/ CO-CREATION RESIDENCIES
Our practical Intensive Co-Creation Residencies take place at international open call occasions to be announced.
In-person Co-Creation Residency opportunities last from a minimum of 10 days up to 3 weeks. They are open to emerging and established artists who are dedicated to collaborating with VestAndPage and other artists in a collective performance opera* to be presented publicly (either alongside VestAndPage or under their guidance). You must provide extensive information about your artistic background and urgency and demonstrate a solid commitment to an immersive, collaborative full-time artistic production process towards a public performance. These processes are usually accompanied and co-tutored by a team of associate artists to allow safe spaces during the intense working process.
* Collective performance operas are complexly layered collaborative live performance works created through medium- to long-term intensive co-creation processes by VestAndPage in collaboration with other artists. These live works are presented only once and are based on the unique contribution that each of the invited collaborators brings into the work.
Associate co-tutors in intensive residency classes: Marcel Sparmann, Marianna Andrigo, Aldo Aliprandi, Fenia Kotsopoulou, Sara Simeoni, Marisa Garreffa, Joseph Morgan Schofield, Ash McNaughton.
/ONLINE/
We also offer in limited capacity ONLINE MASTER CLASSES and WORKSHOPS on performance-based filmmaking and one-to-one MENTORSHIP – please get in touch.
MAIN TOPICS
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Poetics of Relations: Collaborative performance operas, performance-based filmmaking and the psychogeography of symbiotic realms
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The Temporary Artistic Community: Expanding beyond the artistic self toward collaboration
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Agree to Disagree: Uncovering fragility and failures of the individual and the collective within social and environmental spheres
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Dance on the Limits Hand in Hand: Trust in change, endurance, union, pain sublimation and risk-taking with a poetic bodily approach to art practice and a focus on universal human experiences
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From the Personal to the Universal: Material from the personal and genetic library accessed through insightful thinking and spiritual practices that allow viewers to address realistic contents through fresh iconography in an otherworldly surrounding
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The Hidden Beauty of our Violated Landscapes: From visible places and invisible spaces in the physical, mental, spiritual, and social body
Working practically together in our co-tutored collaborative practice using the bodies (physical, mental and spiritual) as primary artistic tools means focusing on the body as a poetic and imaginary landscape. This includes being at the same time the subject and object of artistic creation, as well as expanding to the social and the political through the creation of temporary artistic communities. Through our Introductory Workshops, Intensive Classes, or Co-Creation processes, you can gain insight into our process-led performance art practice in the name of illuminating universal meanings through a "Poetics of Relations". This involves a relational perception of the being, memory activation, and personal experience. Changing contexts such as 24-hour topics are applied to develop authentic modes of artistic action. We work on a range of techniques and approaches reflecting our practices and backgrounds and the interface of visual arts, performance art, applied and oriental theatre, martial arts, Iyengar and Ashtanga vinyasa yoga, philosophy, and creative writing. Practical subjects include the art of sustaining a life as an artist, independence, self-reliance, building temporary artistic communities, and innovative approaches for new modes of existence.
We work on a wide range of techniques and approaches:
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Individual and collective performance work;
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Devising and improvisation techniques;
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The physical self as a site for image and meaning in performance;
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Personal and collective social responsibility through artistic acts;
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The sense of memory as a germinal matter for artistic creation;
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The expansion beyond ourselves – how to bridge apparently separate actions/artists into a complex collective
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Audience-performer relationships – levels and modes of interaction;
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The role of time and pattern – i.e. duration, endurance, speed, and repetition;
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Authenticity-based expression;
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and more.
RECOMMENDED READING
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VestAndPage's core concept of the Temporary Artistic Community
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VestAndPage Performance Opera as a Research and Learning Device
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VestAndPage – True Beyond Fiction Review by Penzo+Fiore about the final presentation of the ART WEEK | Summer Class by VestAndPage, Venice, 2016.
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Loïe. Revista de danza, performance y nuevos medios "COLLECTIVE SIGNATURES Performing the BODY / Performing the TEXT" Photographs and excerpts from a corpus of performative texts written and conceived during the Intensive Class by VestAndPage, Formentera, 2018.
CURRENT AND PAST TEACHINGS
Accademia Unidee Lecturer, B.A. Pistoletto Foundation (Biella, IT)
ArtEZ University of the Arts Lecturer, M.A. Masters of Performance Practices (Arnhem, NL)
Norwegian Theatre Academy Masters Performance Practice (Fredrikstad), SAIC School of the Arts Institute Performance Studies (Chicago), NYU Steinhardt (Venice/New York), TeaK Theatre Academy (Helsinki), Albanian University of Arts (Tirana), BITEF Theatre (Belgrade), Venice International Performance Art Week (Venice), School for Curatorial Studies (Venice), Centre for Community Cultural Development (Hong Kong), Museo Universitario del Chopo (Mexico City), Universidad Nacional de las Arte Experimental (Caracas), Taipei Artist Village (Taipei), Seoul Art Space (Seoul), EMBA Escuela Carlos Morel (Buenos Aires), FADO Performance Art Centre (Toronto), Grace Exhibition Space (New York), Dfbrl8r Gallery (Chicago), The Substation Theatre (Singapore), Gray's School of Art (Aberdeen), Theatre Academy Isole Comprese (Florence), Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia (Venice), Universidad Austral (Valdivia, Chile), Alumnos47 Foundation (Mexico City), Open Space Gallery (Victoria B.C.), Deutsches Institut (Florence), performance s p a c e (London), KARST Gallery (Plymouth).
Short documentary of the VestAndPage introductory workshop Fragile Limits
Taipei Artist Village, Taipei, 2012
Excerpts from the final public performance of the 10-days Intensive Performance Summer Class by La Pocha Nostra & VestAndPage.
In the framework of the Educational Learning Program of the Venice International Performance Art Week | ART WEEK Workshop Series
C32 performingartsworkspace, Venice, June 2017
Short documentary of the VestAndPage introductory workshop on performance for video La Naturaleza del Imagen Poético y su Performatividad
Vortice, presented INVE Plataforma Experimental
Valparaiso, Chile, 2016