Every visualisation of the selected videos to launch PAV will be for free until October 1, 2023, thanks to the generous contribution of the featured artists.
Fed up with the big city life, the pandemic, ecocide, and generalized violence, in August of 2022, Gómez-Peña and Balitrónica ran away to the gorgeous desert of Roswell, New Mexico, the oldest desert in North America. The RaiR Foundation generously housed and supported their strange filmmaking process during their stay.
Gómez-Peña and Balitrónica invited artists EmaLee Arroyo, Sarah Stolar, Jess Fitz, and Kate Turner to make a performance art film. There was no script or film score, but rather drafts of performance rituals, a bunch of found props, handwritten poems, and some equipment to play with. The word “alien” was on their mind. What follows are excerpts of the material created during this residency.
Becoming Fossil invites viewers to become time travelers through kaleidoscopic sensations of touch and elemental change. Join in and travel backward and forward in time around our small precious planet. Ride the waves of climate emergencies and experience both extinction and resiliency in human and more-than-human touches.
The last walk to a melting glacier and the rituals of walking the moist ground it reveals by leaving. Things to carry with oneself on wounded paths and singing to the ancient frozen imprints disappearing into the memory of algal blooms sprouting in the warm seas. A journey on foot, connecting homes across the nomadic landscapes of borrowed belonging. A body alive, in the haunts of breaking ice.
It has been 112 years since one single building in Tbilisi has stood as a silent witness to the passage of time, hosting countless generations, families, and lives. Facing all wars, national catastrophes, economical disasters and other troubles throughout all of its life, now it is the time for it to bid farewell to the 19 families who have called it home, as it prepares to be consigned to history forever.
After the temporary relocation the residents of the building will return to the same pin on the map but to a newly built apartment block.
The movie is made by Sabrina Bellenzier and Giorgi Rodionov, who explore the migration of memories from home to home at the same location, where the new inhabitants become the ghosts of the ruins the new home was built on.
This project was developed in collaboration with Untitled Tbilisi, an art organisation that has been an integral part of the house for years, further emphasising the connection between the building and the creative work surrounding it. The film appears to be a reflection on the passage of time, the continuity of memory, and the transformation of physical spaces.
"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers to herself"
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
12 sempreviva seeds were grown at Belgrade balcony and after two months of adaptation, they were adopted by 12 women.
This is a tribute to all women, to remind them that their "invisible" interior is their brightest aura.
This movie shows the love we carry in the unique existence of a female body and soul, which is the main key to the eternal flame.
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?
A performance for the camera exploring the theme of ‘Body and Citizenship’ and how the maternal body might operate as a site for this passage from Nature’s world of violence and wilderness to the world of the polis and its language brought by theatrical and philosophical discourse. The video has as its starting point the passage to citizenship concerning the birth and use of language. Accordingly, the performance’s title stems from one of the roles of Artemis in Ancient Greece: Kourotrophos (Greek: Κουροτρόφος, “child nurturer”) and Lochia (Greek: Λοχία, “belonging to childbirth”). Artemis was responsible for the delivery and upbringing of children from childhood to adulthood and civil life.
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 SamboSound and Music: Mauro Sambo
A video performance with a spoken text as a by-product of the “Treaty on European Union” and the “Treaty establishing the European Community”. Only the paragraphs, articles and points containing the word Enossis (Union) have been saved from the original texts of the treaties. All terms like bank, banking, ECB (European Central Bank), chapter, costs, country, economic, European, fees, government, governmental, international, market, monetary, nation, national, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), people, and state have been removed. Without adding or replacing phrases and words (except changing grammatical issues where required for the Greek language), the new text dismantles the institutional character of its members (Member States-Nations) and the central economic/monetary profile underlying the constitution of the European Community. The video is a comment on the nature of the mother tongue since it has to be read so that the missing words will not affect the pronunciation of the terms that follow them. The new ENOSSIS text seems more akin to a humanist manifesto than an economic and monetary treaty.
Only by undergoing abuse do I now see it around me all the time—not only the abuse I experienced but also racism, gender inequality, abuse of the planet and the underlying structures of power. What strikes me in my waking up process is that the victims of whatever abuse suffer silently. Speaking up about it doesn’t help most of the time because people don’t believe you or tell you it wasn’t all that bad, whereby they are causing extra harm and isolation. I understand this mechanism of disbelief now. If you acknowledge abuse, you must step out of your comfort zone and leave behind this false sense of security. You have to take responsibility. Most people won’t do this. I stepped out of the groove—I cannot be silence(d) anymore.
For centuries, the Mediterranean Sea has occupied a central place in the evolution of human society and Europe. It is both a physical barrier to human mobility and an element that connects land and continents. Odysseus pursued his hero’s journey around the Mediterranean basin. Today, the Mare Nostrum is a precarious, tragic space where immigrants, attracted by the siren’s song of salvation and sanctuary in Europe, embark on a perilous journey that could lead them to exclusion or inclusion. The word siren stems from the Greek σειρά (seirá: rope, cord) and εἴρω (eírō: to tie, join, fasten), resulting in the meaning of the one who binds or entangles. Therefore, the siren will knot deceptive nets of blood-red ropes on the Mediterranean seashore, ultimately leaving them behind. Whether they stay there to protect or imprison, for salvation or damnation remains unclear.
Vittorio Venturoli writes this performative piece brings one to reflect on the dual relationship of migrants with the Mediterranean. Vehicle of migrations, the sea is numb and neutral in its endless role of levelling, smoothening edges, softening, tie after tie, even the sharpest will. Even the loudest storms are muted with time into a still, quiet fairness. It never alters the motion of its impartial ruling. And so, as guardians, instruments of its blind justice, the sirens weave the net of its will, enveloping wanderers, conquerors and fugitives. The performer embodies the siren—the tool of its choice, the voice of the waves, an ambiguous
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".
"As always, I am not interested in just telling my story. I tap and share the story told and untold of our humanity, which I live through witnessing these present times—for I’m here, in this space, and not alone. This performance is a journey through personal and collective memories and history. The body and the artist’s body become a canvas, a sculpture, poetry, and a sound, too"
Concept delves into the notion of notifications and social media becoming our sustenance, our daily food, and a captivating addiction that consumes our lives, shedding light on our modern habits and obsessions.
Performance challenges our reliance on technology and explores the impact on our senses. Breaking 12 plates symbolizes a year and time passed in our digital dependencies. Background notification soundscape reminds us of the constant stream of information we face daily, while the dripping water represents emotional complexity and the paradox of our insatiable thirst for connection. The performance prompts reflection on our relationship with technology, its effect on sensory experiences, and the content we consume. Through broken plates, notification noises, and dripping water, it calls for deeper, more meaningful connections and conscious consumption.
In 2020, Gomez-Peña was invited to a toxic waste site right in the periphery of San Francisco that a group of anarchists had occupied during pandemia and turned it into an art space. The place includes a bunch of abandoned train wagons, an old Hells Angels clubhouse and a native plants garden curated by a powerful Lakota couple. It is an astonishing place. He joined the raggedy collective right away. And asked his long-time collaborator filmmaker Gustavo Vazquez if he was interested in making a film there. He invited Lalo Obregon, one of the original cameramen of Jodorowsky(El Topo, Fando y Lis and La Montaña Sagrada)...and together they put out a call: 25 performance artists, dancers and musicians showed up. The result is a half hour performance movie, a utopian/dystopian project titled “SF Apocalypse,” commenting on the collapse of the creative city. Performance film was their salvation during pandemia. The films they make are quick and dirty, and self produced. They edit them at Gomez-Peña’s kitchen table. It's like returning to the origins of underground cinema; an old Chicano motto from Gustavo Vasquez. “Minimum budget, maximum quality".
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.
SOLA reflects on experiences of loneliness and isolation but also on solidarity and the hope that holds out against them.
The artist’s hair, growing since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, becomes a symbol for the loss of physical contact that our lives became marked by. With the act of braiding being an act of sisterly companionship and consolidation, the artist has to execute it alone. What is more, in SOLA the hair becomes a marker of time, having grown through the numerous crises that marked the past years with the eruption of violence all over the globe and in particular against women.
"A feather is very light, but when there are many, it is complicated to move them just by breathing. 3 is the perfect number—a symbol of vitality. I blow on 3 kg of white feathers and invite you to join me. Our breaths will meet between order and disorder, help and obstacle." - Nicola Fornoni.
Performance turns a regular medical ritual performed by an artist in his private life into an action, representing the continuing process of repetitive life events that also shape us as people (and there is a question about how much we let them shape us?).
This is a story of personal saviour, solitude, inner thoughts colliding, transition, mental and physical health, strength, and ultimately, an interest in how we can turn a forever occurring event into an artistic ritual.
When you are housebound, you become mainly invisible to the world. Unable to participate in the daily activities that happen outside the door of your home, it is easy to start feeling like you don’t exist. In The Struggle for Visibility, the artist attempts to become part of the outside world. They are covered in a golden silk sheet and stay close to the ground to represent their ongoing separate reality as chronically ill. In the public space, they become hyper-visible whilst remaining largely hidden from view. In their dreams of belonging to the outside world, they desperately try to overcome all the barriers it poses. In the last attempt to become more visible, they climb the highest stairs in the busiest part of town, but they find that this is too much to ask of their fragile body. Also, it does not lead to the meaningful social engagement they had wished for. Instead, they end up alone, exhausted by the effort of trying. For sick and disabled bodies to become more visible in public spaces, we need societies to adapt to our needs rather than push ourselves to become more visible to society.
‘these teeming forms’ was shot on England’s South Pennine Moorland in a breath between lockdowns in 2021. These windswept hills formed Joseph’s adolescent horizon and they have returned there in adulthood, walking out into the land holding grief, seeking connection.
The film has a sensate and mythic quality; performance actions to camera are collaged with cyanotype printing processes of analogue photography, speculative texts and an original score.
The wet, wily moorland contains large peat deposits, produced over thousands of years as normative processes of decomposition are frustrated by the great quantity of water that falls on the hills. The peat is a collage of animal and plant matter, minerals and weather. Like the body, the land is an archive. The film is framed by an interview with the artist’s father, who speaks of his own remembrance of a haunting adolescent encounter many decades previously.
Queer ecologes are imagined here as a process of wilding, of entering the land and being opened by it. Memory and desire, history and loss, future and fantasy become porous, contributing to a textural and sensate meditation on living.
these teeming forms was commissioned by ]performance s p a c e[ and supported using public funds by Arts Council England.
A performance for camera taking as a starting point the killings of women by their partners, during 2021 in Greece. Domestic (and other forms of) violence, inflicted predominantly on female-identified subjects around the globe, remains under-reported, stigmatised, and kept as taboo behind doors: devastatingly pervasive in capitalistic, patriarchal, hegemonic, and (hetero)normative societies. The performance whilst using specific signifiers and (symbolic) references focuses on skin self-writing and dancing as acts of resilience and (self)empowerment "THIS IS NOT YOUR TERRITORY" is not only a performance for the dead but mainly for the still alive ones, the daily survivors, including the children behind the closed doors, and their joint screams. There is not enough space for the names of all of them, but definitely, they are not forgotten.
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.
A stray dog that has been given a name has a far greater chance of survival.— Hannah Arendt
The core themes of this performance for the camera are the problem of moral principles and the relationship of the body to citizenship from the perspective of Stoic philosophy. Stoicism (a school of Hellenistic philosophy that flourished in Ancient Greece) focuses on human nature as part of universal nature and cosmic sympathy: the sense that the universe is an indivisible living organism, always in flux. Concurrently, the video is accompanied by an evocative depiction of an individual’s distress, serving as a poignant reminder that rights are achieved through united efforts and resilience during periods of oppression, devastation, and lamentation. Pappas’s artistic endeavour seeks to capture the essence of existential unease within today’s civilization. By weaving together individual and collective human and non-human connections with concepts encompassing the body, citizenship, space, time, mysteries, and the opposition utopia/dystopia, Universal Rights i.e. Naked Statelessness, deploys the camera as a vehicle for testimony and documentation. It deciphers a contagious and symbolic discourse, functioning as a mechanism to challenge the prevailing inclination towards the uniformity of thought and behaviour.
“I’m here, inside me. I’m always moving. My home is myself.”
Everything rotates around the question: “Where are you now?” Those who ask this question may also look for coordinates for themselves. A silent voice moves along the moving images. Thoughts about being and belonging to oneself are juxtaposed over natural landscapes—nature itself. Movement is the constant that binds the bodies. There is a need to visualise the self and others geographically to acknowledge the tangible existence of things. The sea is the protagonist—water’s continuous flow, water as life and death, the element and place to start a journey, a part of a journey, a little fragment of life. Again.
I'm Thinking of You presents a surreal, dreamlike image... a romantic vision of childhood fantasy and abandon. The body is central, but we are also presented with objects and music, which converge to take the viewer through a contemplative, personal experience. The first inspiration for I'm Thinking of You came from a childhood object, which Franko B made into a sculpture, altered for safe use by adults.
The idea was to allow adults to play, to forget their problems, to let go, or just to have fun - in the same way that children are allowed to. Over time, and with engagement with the composer, Helen Ottaway, the idea has developed and changed, with Franko using performance and music as a means to create his desired image.
An abandoned NATO base built during the Cold War on a mountain pass linking three valleys to each other in north Italy. Old business lines, passageways and other morphological peculiarities. Sound waves, cymbal vibrations and fake animal puppies mark an imaginary sense of the time passing. The landscapes around take on ascetic and fleeting colours. Those zones that were once controlled from now on are a way out. The senses conjugate an escape trajectory from the body to the sky. The video consists of three chapters. Each of them begins with a description of emotions.
The story develops through symbols concerning identity, presence, existence and condition. Documentary scenes alternate with anatomical frames. Keeping direction straight on, the protagonist discovers new territories—nowhere is everywhere.
He trespasses and tracks them down with his orthopaedic devices, migrating from a tunnel’s darkness to the light, like a miner who reaches the surface after spending endless moments in the depths of the earth where the rumble of metal makes its way through the rocks.
The disappearing home, flooded by the rising sea levels. The tidal feeling of solastalgia,
the homesickness when you are still at home, but you know it’s under threat and will one day be taken by the water.
Areas created and protected by human efforts from encroaching waters are not just a home for people but also for a diverse ecosystem. The video’s performer, Steef Kersbergen, learned as a child that their hometown in the Netherlands would flood irredeemably and, with it, a third of the country. The precise timeline of this event remains uncertain, with scientists offering varying estimates.
The Dutch people are divided in dealing with this eventuality. Some are preparing. Others sit with or suppress the discomfort, push away the water, fear, grief, and sadness and continue living. As for now, it is okay.
"Hi,
I'll tell it in English.
It was a moment
one freezing afternoon,
left,
wandering…
wandering on the beach.
There were a lot of people,
There were people, dogs, children.
I noticed this figure
that from behind looked like a director,
it seemed that in front of the waves, he had an orchestra,
and organised and directed these waves.
The sea wasn't that rough,
but maybe that's how he saw it.
And he had no one,
he was pretty isolated,
self-isolated.
Inside this…
He didn't talk. He directed.
And I even came close
before I made the film,
and it was just,
it's as if he saw something,
He was directing.
Yet,
To me, he moved me,
He touched me,
seeing him.
And then the text came to me.
I didn't even have to write the text,
I told it and then copied it,
Yes, yes.
I never wrote it
watching the video after,
a few days later,
I improvised."
Franko B.
Using innovative body mapping techniques of a film made up of thousands of found images, Franko B revisits his seminal bloodletting works for the first time in his practice. Each cut challenging the audience to confront their own history, a global history of war, abandonment, homophobia, freedom, displacement, famine and sex.
In I’m Here, present but disembodied, Franko B provides a portrait of our failing society. As the artist bleeds for a world that is hemorrhaging to death, pain and nostalgia emit to expose how Franko B became who he is amongst all of the shit.
“Every day I’m trying to make sense of my extended time here. The past is part of our present. It never left us but is evolving rather than repeating; it is continuing to allow us to make the same mistakes. I believe this is valid for both the personal and the political. I'm Here is trying to express these two connected worlds. It doesn’t revisit the past romantically or melancholically in the context of our political and social histories but questions and reinterprets it.” – Franko B
UNLOVED - a one-off performance at Rua Red. The performance, featuring the works from the series Homage to the New World Order, 2017, manifests the artist’s violent resistance against institutional abuse and negligence.
Love, insignificant, this, insignificant, body, insignificant, powerless, insignificant, never, insignificant, democracy, insignificant, pain, insignificant, life, insignificant, shit, insignificant, fuck, insignificant, artist, insignificant, I, insignificant, mediocracy, insignificant, deleted, insignificant, self, insignificant… – Franko B
Milk & Blood is a performance held by Franko B on July 27, 2015, at Toynbee Studios (London). It appropriates the aesthetics of boxing for 32 minutes, rounds of mental and physical endurance during which Franko explores themes of pain, eroticism, revulsion, ecstasy and masculinity. The performance becomes a metaphor for social struggle and the ability to overcome it.
Internationally recognised as a pioneering performance artist, Franko B uses both his body and a punching bag as democratic tools, embodying notions of the personal, political and poetic. In this unprecedented performance, Franko B returns to the seminal aesthetics of the wound. Milk will bleed. He says: “Looking introspectively, I can truly say that I have successfully wrecked my career as a ‘bleeding’ artist and continued my lust for life thanks to language.”
Franko B presents the multi-disciplinary live performance, Because of Love: volume 1. The piece represents a major departure in Franko’s practice, moving away from the gallery based tableaux vivants of his previous work.
Drawing upon memories of vivid moments and experiences of art, film and dance from different stages in his life, this piece is about life, childhood, humanity, inhumanity, love and grief. Intimate connections are made between personal memories and lived experiences... experiences that can be mediated by someone else’s voice or art form, or appropriated to become one’s own in a way which is both personal and political.
In a provocative and stark portrait of the existential self, Franko B uses his own drawn blood as a symbol of carnal reality and suggests the natural destitution of the body as a fundamental of existence.
Standing before us a mute body-object, achromatic and cadaverous, his performance is an act of cleansing, stripping the flesh of identity.
萬語千言 WISH YOU WHERE HERE
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TYPO3
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METAMORS
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PROPEL: BODY ON ROBOT ARM
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FUTURE MONUMENTS
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MONSTRAS
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STARSHIP SOMATICS: An Underwater Dancevideofilm and video.
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DRAG KING. IL SOGNO DI JULIA.
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(A)MARE CONCHIGLIE
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OLTRE IL CORPO (BEYOND THE BODY) Evolutions from Performance Art World.
