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• SIN∞FIN – PERFORMANCES AT THE CORE OF THE LOOKING-GLASS

  BY VESTANDPAGE

  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.
• TIME, SPACE, NOTHING

  BY FRANKO B

  "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.
• FUTURE MONUMENTS

  BY Nathalie Anguezomo MBA Bikoro

  "In every African country we establish a careful inventory of all colonial statues and monuments. These we shall collect in a single park, which will serve as a museum for generations to come. This pan-African park-cum-museum will serve as colonialism's symbolic grave on our continent. Once we have performed this burial, let us --- promise never again to erect statues to anyone at all. Instead, let us build everywhere libraries, theatres, cultural centres - all these things that from this day forward will nourish tomorrow's creative growth." Achille Mbembe. Future Monuments is an interactive meditation of historical visual experiences based on a visual interactive archival Opera score of which the video herewith is part. The project develops an experiment in sense-memory politics as a series of interventions examining memory and colonial histories in the past, present and future. Each score from the series will challenge visual experiences and perceptions about the way in which political language shaped histories, our sense of collective memory and trauma to propose new ways of memory through interaction, community participation and visual intervention. The project intends to form a collective memory by creating a time machine through 11 scores of conceptual and visual experiences. The experience migrates through research and archives and ongoing modes of post-colonial experience across diverse cultures and spaces. The investigation meanders through the stories of people and addresses the issues of forbidden and forgotten histories by creating visual interventions and building memorials for the 22nd century. Each score responds to particular spaces, cultures and cities. Future Monuments involves exercises in decolonial memories and actions on cannibalism to reform our perception of what we call history by breaking anthropological selections and reconstructing untold histories left in the memories of the present. It presents different spaces for investigation in indigenous communities and urban spaces. This investigation towards decolonial cannibalism and aesthesis takes 5 stages:1. The Uncomfortable Truth (mourning) 2. Take This Hammer (commemorations) 3. Pieta (birth) 4. Les Statues Meurent Aussi (the gift monument) 5. The Brick Moon or an Ecology of Darkness (the future)