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• PLANTAIN

  BY VESTANDPAGE

  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".
• MARE NOSTRUM

  BY CHANTAL SPAPENS

  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
• I’M NOT YOUR BABE 1, PART 1

  BY Franko B

  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.