VestAndPage

The VIII VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK 2023 presents “DigiLabAir | Emergencies of the Contemporary”.    The event was focused on sustainable development as a fundamental principle of our societies, featuring a live performance program with internationally recognised performance artists addressing pressing issues such as marginalisation, poverty, climate emergency, migration, accessibility, social and gender equality, justice and peace.   "We are all part of this. We are all in this together. Let’s do it differently. Let’s do it in a way that we have never done before. And then, let’s never do it again this way. Let’s do it anew, every time, anew. Each and every time is different, and each and every time is new." VESTANDPAGE.    Featured artists:  Andrigo/Aliprandi (with Anna Maschietto, Ilaria Bagarolo, Maria Cargnelli, Michela Lorenzano, Valentina Milan, Maela Dal Mas), Franko B, Niya B, Nicola Fornoni, Dyana Gravina, Marta Jovanovic, Petra Kuppers, Steef Kersbergen & Vicky Maier, Yiannis Pappas, Priiya Prethora, Gabriele Provenzano, Sabrina Bellenzier & Giorgi Rodionov. The VIII VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK 2023  has been curated by its founders VestAndPage (Andrea Pagnes & Verena Stenke) in collaboration with Anja Foerschner (ECC Performance Art), Marta Jovanovic (G12 Hub), Francesco Kiais Mind the G.A.P.), Agustin Arguello & Gabriel Lyons (PAV - Performance Art Video). Produced by Studio Contemporanéo, Live Arts Cultures, EntrAxis and PAV Performance Art Supported by the European Cultural Centre (ECC), We Exhibit, Venezia Prime Scelte, Daily Press.  The DigiLabAir exhibition has been co-funded by the European Union in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Mailand. Cultural partnership: Accademia Unidee - Citta dell'arte Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, and RUFA Rome University of Fine Arts. Under the patronage of Regione Veneto, Città Metropolitana di Venezia and Le Città in Festa. Technical direction: Aldo Aliprandi, Giovanni Dantomio.  Logistics: Giorgia De Santi, Giorgio de Battisti.  Event writer: Giulia Casalini.  Photographers: Lorenza Cini, Hugo Glendinning, Alexander Harbaugh, Edward Smith  Videographers: Matilde Sambo, Orlando Myxx. Camera and editing: Matilde Sambo Sound and Music: Mauro Sambo

2010 VestAndPage inspired a new experimental and ecological performance-based film production method. Theirs are complexly layered film works that move in the realms of magic realism, through which they examine the evolution from original documentation of performative acts toward contextual, non-linear storytelling. Their films are produced on-site as direct and visceral performances, which are not rehearsed or staged and happen in response to extreme environments. Stenke and Pagnes usually work alone or with a small team of collaborators and use minimal non-invasive equipment. In a constant search through a reflexive mode for new images of interior landscapes, they consider the world the studio and host: they do not go to a place to tell a story – they go to a place to find its story. To perform in these thresholds where the visible blends with the invisible, they have developed a psychogeographical method to activate memory and uncover layers of information and imagery stored in the human body, psyche, spirit, and non-human environment. Since then, they have produced three feature-length films, a silent film, a trilogy of shorts, two shorts and numerous interview series and art videos. In 2020, they published "Poetics of Relations: Manifesto on Performance-Based Filmmaking". VestAndPage's first film trilogy, "sin∞fin", presents three medium-length art films of collaborative performances in epic locations worldwide. Teetering between the real and the visionary, these films feature the artists undertaking surreal and ephemeral acts. Amplified by the unfamiliar environments, the performances reflect on universal human experiences such as altruism, partnership and the transient nature of existence. Episode #1, "Performances at the End of the World," set in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego (2010), thematically focuses on the microcosm and intimate domain of the individual and the couple. Episode #2, "Performances at the Holy Centre," located in Uttarakhand, Delhi & Kashmir (2011), highlights the topic of society and religion. The concluding episode, "Performances at the Core of the Looking-Glass," filmed in Antarctica (2012), engages through narratives on nature and the universe with the macrocosm. The artists' actions evolve in direct response to the surroundings in which they find themselves. The camera records what possible spectators would view, yet the movie is not a documentary. Instead, the works are pieced together organically, forming an autonomous story generated through the process of making it to be read by each viewer in a personal way.

2010 VestAndPage inspired a new experimental and ecological performance-based film production method. Theirs are complexly layered film works that move in the realms of magic realism, through which they examine the evolution from original documentation of performative acts toward contextual, non-linear storytelling. Their films are produced on-site as direct and visceral performances, which are not rehearsed or staged and happen in response to extreme environments. Stenke and Pagnes usually work alone or with a small team of collaborators and use minimal non-invasive equipment. In a constant search through a reflexive mode for new images of interior landscapes, they consider the world the studio and host: they do not go to a place to tell a story – they go to a place to find its story. To perform in these thresholds where the visible blends with the invisible, they have developed a psychogeographical method to activate memory and uncover layers of information and imagery stored in the human body, psyche, spirit, and non-human environment. Since then, they have produced three feature-length films, a silent film, a trilogy of shorts, two shorts and numerous interview series and art videos. In 2020, they published "Poetics of Relations: Manifesto on Performance-Based Filmmaking". VestAndPage's first film trilogy, "sin∞fin", presents three medium-length art films of collaborative performances in epic locations worldwide. Teetering between the real and the visionary, these films feature the artists undertaking surreal and ephemeral acts. Amplified by the unfamiliar environments, the performances reflect on universal human experiences such as altruism, partnership and the transient nature of existence. Episode #1, "Performances at the End of the World," set in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego (2010), thematically focuses on the microcosm and intimate domain of the individual and the couple. Episode #2, "Performances at the Holy Centre," located in Uttarakhand, Delhi & Kashmir (2011), highlights the topic of society and religion. The concluding episode, "Performances at the Core of the Looking-Glass," filmed in Antarctica (2012), engages through narratives on nature and the universe with the macrocosm. The artists' actions evolve in direct response to the surroundings in which they find themselves. The camera records what possible spectators would view, yet the movie is not a documentary. Instead, the works are pieced together organically, forming an autonomous story generated through the process of making it to be read by each viewer in a personal way.

2010 VestAndPage inspired a new experimental and ecological performance-based film production method. Theirs are complexly layered film works that move in the realms of magic realism, through which they examine the evolution from original documentation of performative acts toward contextual, non-linear storytelling. Their films are produced on-site as direct and visceral performances, which are not rehearsed or staged and happen in response to extreme environments. Stenke and Pagnes usually work alone or with a small team of collaborators and use minimal non-invasive equipment. In a constant search through a reflexive mode for new images of interior landscapes, they consider the world the studio and host: they do not go to a place to tell a story – they go to a place to find its story. To perform in these thresholds where the visible blends with the invisible, they have developed a psychogeographical method to activate memory and uncover layers of information and imagery stored in the human body, psyche, spirit, and non-human environment. Since then, they have produced three feature-length films, a silent film, a trilogy of shorts, two shorts and numerous interview series and art videos. In 2020, they published "Poetics of Relations: Manifesto on Performance-Based Filmmaking". VestAndPage's first film trilogy, "sin∞fin", presents three medium-length art films of collaborative performances in epic locations worldwide. Teetering between the real and the visionary, these films feature the artists undertaking surreal and ephemeral acts. Amplified by the unfamiliar environments, the performances reflect on universal human experiences such as altruism, partnership and the transient nature of existence. Episode #1, "Performances at the End of the World," set in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego (2010), thematically focuses on the microcosm and intimate domain of the individual and the couple. Episode #2, "Performances at the Holy Centre," located in Uttarakhand, Delhi & Kashmir (2011), highlights the topic of society and religion. The concluding episode, "Performances at the Core of the Looking-Glass," filmed in Antarctica (2012), engages through narratives on nature and the universe with the macrocosm. The artists' actions evolve in direct response to the surroundings in which they find themselves. The camera records what possible spectators would view, yet the movie is not a documentary. Instead, the works are pieced together organically, forming an autonomous story generated through the process of making it to be read by each viewer in a personal way.

It may be a documentary, but it is not. It may be an art film, but it is not. It is instead a philosophical work. –Strona Tańca A memory message to every human being. –Lucrezia De Domizio Durini VestAndPage’s performance-based feature film based on actual historical events, “PLANTAIN”, was produced and filmed on location during the month-long performance walk by artist duo VestAndPage from Northern Germany through Poland to the Russian region of Kaliningrad in May/June 2015. Taking a private family story and the historical event of post-WWII displacements as starting points, the film focuses on the issue of the replaced – displaced – in-place body. It questions how past and present speak to and through our bodies facing ethical, social and existential challenges. It investigates the process of acceptance of history, its individual and collective archiving, and concepts of identity and permeability of cultural borders. In 7 episodes, the film recalls family members to look into time, mystery, war, duty, courage, trauma and fidelity. In 2010, VestAndPage inspired a new experimental and ecological performance-based film production method. Theirs are complexly layered film works that move in the realms of magic realism, through which they examine the evolution from original documentation of performative acts toward contextual, non-linear storytelling. Their films are produced on-site as direct and visceral performances, which are not rehearsed or staged and happen in response to extreme environments. Stenke and Pagnes usually work alone or with a small team of collaborators and use minimal non-invasive equipment. In a constant search through a reflexive mode for new images of interior landscapes, they consider the world the studio and host: they do not go to a place to tell a story – they go to a place to find its story. To perform in these thresholds where the visible blends with the invisible, they have developed a psychogeographical method to activate memory and uncover layers of information and imagery stored in the human body, psyche, spirit, and non-human environment. Since then, they have produced three feature-length films, a silent film, a trilogy of shorts, two shorts and numerous interview series and art videos. In 2020, they published "Poetics of Relations: Manifesto on Performance-Based Filmmaking".

An original experiment in fusing different art forms to create a comprehensive offering that, while maintaining each ingredient's unique flavours, leaves behind a nouveau aftertaste that will soothe the soul. –Pixelsgarage A radical, contemporary fairy tale. A collective performance-based film about the concept of home produced and co-created across Europe, the U.S. and Canada during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in April and May 2020. In the rooms of an imaginary dwelling, we encounter twenty-two artists in performance action, rituals and poetic sharing about their isolated notions of home: a place-non-place, where the invisible is made visible and vice versa. Without inside or outside, we recognise the rooms because they originate from the depths of our hearts. There, encounters continue to be possible despite distance, quarantine and insulation. What does "home" mean when forced inside, with insecurity, unpredictability, disease and death being the denominators of the moment? What can body-based artists speak about then, and to whom? Physically distant, how can a collective co-creative spirit be kept up?

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK, VestAndPage and the Anam Cara collective presented in December 2022 the performance opera UnderScars at Palazzo Mora, the historical premises of the European Cultural Centre in Venice. UnderScars is a gathering of experienced artists and performers who challenge their practice to attempt novel perspectives on art and society. It is a collective work that gravitates around the themes of disability, severe diseases, addiction, patriarchy, capitalism, abuse and discrimination. The wounds and stigma they cause are dealt with poetically through performance actions and artmaking rituals of kinship and togetherness. On this occasion, Palazzo Mora’s main hall and six adjacent rooms transform into a dwelling site of interconnected performance installations, where temporary, intensive co-creation processes aim to reveal the qualities of existence. The hosting space functions as a social-narrative incubator wherein performance methods are intertwined for coagulating inclusive and expansive life stories. The collaborative performance unfolds as it builds on sustained encounters of different artistic research combined with performative practices. As the title suggests, the artists now gather to unveil precious experiences of vulnerabilities, hesitations, fragilities, hopes, the unspoken they carry under their cicatrices, and wounds healed by performing. Memories and experiential transformation processes entwine and collide to respond poetically to present emergencies. UnderScars was envisioned and devised by the artist duos VestAndPage (Verena Stenke & Andrea Pagnes) and Marianna Andrigo & Aldo Aliprandi in collaboration with Irina Baldini, Sabrina Bellenzier, Giorgia de Santi, daz disley, Nicola Fornoni, Marisa Garreffa, Fenia Kotsopoulou, Ash McNaughton, Aisha Pagnes, Enok Ripley, Sara Simeoni, Mauro Sambo, Joseph Morgan Schofield, Marcel Sparmann and Emily Welther.