VestAndPage is an artist duo founded in 2006 by Verena Stenke (Germany) and Andrea Pagnes (Italy), working in contemporary performance art, visual art, and film. Their work is positioned within the social, political and environmental context of spherology, fragility, memory activation and communication, with a strong influence of the artists’ backgrounds in philosophy and theatre. [1] They present meditative and ritualistic performances that challenge impermanence, transformation and self-awareness. [2] Over the past years they have presented their work extensively in Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Australia. They work in extensive collaborations in what they call "collective performance operas", and create "temporary artistic communities". An untitled controversial work presented in Singapore in 2011, involves the couple drinking Pagnes' blood. The artist stated in an interview that blood is "the purest part of me", and that "I am using drops of my soul to say something." [3]
Verena Stenke (born 1981, Bad Friedrichshall, Germany) is trained in theatre, martial arts, contemporary dance, and holds qualifications as special effects make-up artist and mask maker. She studied Oriental and Social Theatre. She lived in Berlin, and moved to Florence in 2006.
Andrea Pagnes (born 1962, Venice) holds degrees in Modern Literature and Philosophy, certificates of high studies in Museology, Art critic, and Creative writing, and obtained the diploma of Social Theatre actor and operator. He has been working as independent curator, writer, painter, and glass sculptor. He founded cultural magazines, and has been artistic director of a Murano glass factory. He has translated among others Jurassic Park [4] into Italian, and lived in Venice and Florence.
Verena Stenke and Andrea Pagnes are married, and currently living in Baden-Württemberg, Germany and Venice. [5]
Between 2010 and 2012, VestAndPage produced the experimental film trilogy sin∞fin The Movie in Antarctica, India, Kashmir, Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, combining performance art with filmmaking. [6] Teetering between the real and the visionary, the films feature the two protagonists 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. The first episode "Performances at the End of the World", thematically focuses on the intimate, inner domain of the individual and the couple. The second episode "Performances at the Holy Centre" highlights the topic of society and religion. The concluding episode "Performances at the Core of the Looking-Glass", engages with narratives on nature and the universe. [7] The first episode has been produced at artist-in-residence at CONFL!CTA Contemporary Art and Science Research, Punta Arenas and Tierra del Fuego in December 2010. The second episode has been realized during the artist-in-residence at The Sarai Programme at CSDS, New Delhi, in March/April 2011. [8] The third episode has been produced as part of the cultural program of the National Antarctic Direction, Argentina, on the Antarctic stations Carlini and Esperanza Base in January and February 2012. [9] [10]
In 2015, VestAndPage produced the performance-based feature film Plantain [de: Spitzwegerich] in Germany, Poland and Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia. Filmed on location during the artist duo's month-long performance walk, the project takes a private family story and the historical event of post-WWII displacements as starting points. The artists walked, performed and filmed along the route of war escape of Stenke's ancestors upon the evacuation of East Prussia in winter 1945, in the civil exodus along the Baltic Sea to Northern Germany. Referenced through the performance-walk in real time, the film connects in a layering of histories, people, and personal memories, the intangible and ineffable of a past which has been lived by another generation with a present feeling of guilt. [11] [12] [13]
From May 8, 2015 on – marking the end of WWII in Europe on its 70th anniversary – VestAndPage walked by foot in a month-long performance the path of war exodus that Stenke's family went 70 years before from East Prussia to Northern Germany, this time in the opposite direction: 1110 kilometres from Hemmingstedt, Germany, to Chernyakhovsk (former Insterburg) in the Russian Kaliningrad Oblast. Along the way, the artist realised and filmed site-responsive performances, and collected film and text material on location of true events such as the Castle Insterburg, the Vistula Lagoon, or the former Stutthof concentration camp and seaplane base Kamp (Fort Rogowo). The long durational performance project resulted in a feature-length film. [14]
The 24-hour performance Fear vs Love vs Fear was presented as part of the curatorial project Proyecto Liquido by Alumnos47 Foundation, June 2012. The artists inhabited an empty house in San Miguel Chapultepec, Mexico City and performed inside for 24 hours, with the public free to enter and exit at any time. The body-based actions explored origins and effects of love and fear, being individual or collective, and works on memory associations. [15] In preparation to the live performance, Stenke and Pagnes had previously worked with a group of street girls in Mexico City to understand their fears, desires, and dreams. The text, image and video material produced by the girls during this workshop became part of the performance installation in the house. [16] [17]
Without Tuition or Restraint is a long durational performance of five days and four nights. It took place at The Exchange and Newlyn Gallery in Penzance, as part of the exhibition Performance Transition in November 2011. The couple has been closed inside and didn't exit the gallery for five days and four nights consecutively. During this period Andrea Pagnes lived inside a dog crate, while Verena Stenke inside the gallery space executed one repetitive action each day. The performance questions concepts of freedom, and limits between private and social spheres. [18]
Speak That I Can See You is the first performance of Stenke's and Pagnes' debut as VestAndPage. The interactive piece won the ArtKontakt Prize (Tirana) in 2007. Since then the performance has been presented on several occasions, among others at the Kosovo Art Gallery, Pristina (2007); Fondaco dell’Arte, Venice (2009); XIV Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean, Skopje (2009); Fábrica de Braço de Prata, Lisbon (2010); PingPong Artspace, Taipei (2012); London Art Fair, London (2014). In the installation set of medical surgery videos and a soundtrack of voices speaking about fear in three languages, Stenke invites audience members to participate in a ritual. Pagnes' back is offered as a living canvas for the audience to express their thoughts by writing with effect powder, water, and feathers or nails on his skin. [19]
HOME is a live performance cycle of collective performance operas started by VestAndPage in 2017. Stations of the performance are along the border of the European Union in countries that all have to find a way to deal with the wave of immigration, including Reggello, Italy; Thessaloniki, Greece; KPGT, Belgrade, Serbia; Palazzo Mora, Venice, Italy; National Gallery of Arts, Sopot, Poland; Triennale Ostend, Belgium; Günther Domenig Steinhaus, Austria. The artists inquire into the concepts of home, Heimat, community and sites of belonging. The single chapters are developed together with other artists and presented as final collective performance operas.
AEGIS is a live performance cycle in six parts, developed and presented with the collaboration of other artists in the years 2016 and 2017 in Santiago de Chile; Alt, Istanbul; Grace Exhibition Space, New York City; UKK, Uppsala; Piotrków Trybunalski and at the State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki. The work questions artistically the protective qualities of living matter, defence functions, shielding systems, and aspects of security, questioning what are valuable and timeless protections and safeties. In each chapter, the bodily symbolic acts of the artists are accompanied by the reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the language of the place. Recordings of the Declaration produced for the performance are available for free public domain audio download in English, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, Swedish, Polish and Greek language from the artists' website. [20]
DYAD is a live performance cycle in nine parts, developed and presented in 2014/2015 at hub14, Toronto; Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam; Teatar &TD, Zagreb; Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig; Hermann Brehmer Sanatorium, Sokołowsko; Arnolfini, Bristol; Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen; and closed in a 15-hour durational performance in Moscow. [21] The work looks into the dangers of dichotomy, attachments to dualism, and the paradox of Ego. Through a series of poetic bodily images, the artists question how polarities are being employed as tools of ideology, propaganda or collective manipulation. Each episode starts with a quote from Genesis 7.2 and a physical fight between the artists dressed as a mouse and a rabbit.
Thou Twin of Slumber is a performance cycle in eight parts. It has been produced and presented through the year 2013 at Cyclorama – Boston Centre for the Arts, Boston; [22] Kasteliotissa, Nicosia; Grace Exhibition Space, New York City; Defibrillator Gallery, Chicago; VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver; Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City; [23] and Taidehalli, Helsinki. [24] The work looks into death, sleep and slumber through liminal spaces, and is theoretically inspired by two figures of Greek mythology, the twin brothers Thanatos and Hypnos. In the performances of this cycle, Pagnes repeatedly works on broken glass and mirror pieces, while Stenke decontextualizes movement. [25]
Panta Rhei is a performance cycle in six parts, presented 2011–2012 on tour in Asia at Taipei Artist Village, Taipei; Seoul Art Space, Seoul; CCCD Centre for Community Culture Development, Hong Kong; Goodman Arts Centre, Singapore; Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai. It is a project inquiring impermanent states of transformation in systems and history, and the constant change and temporary nature of thoughts, body and relations. The artists follow a process-led and responsive practice in these performances that do not follow any dramaturgy but are mainly subdue to improvisation. [26]
Balada Corporal is a performance cycle in five parts, presented in the year 2010 on a tour in South America. Venues included the Universidad Nacional Experimental de las Artes, Caracas; University of Chile, Santiago de Chile; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Valdivia; CCEBA Centro Cultural de España, Buenos Aires; Homero Massena Gallery, Vitória. The cycle speaks about the difficulties of real encounters between humans, and the possibilities of transformation through concrete communication. It is composed of four live performances, and includes a fifth chapter that continues to remain conceptual as it consists of transplanting pieces of tattooed skin between the couple. [27]
VestAndPage are the curatorial force behind the Venice International Performance Art Week. The Art Week started with the curated live art exhibition project titled Trilogy of the Bodyin December 2012 at Palazzo Bembo, Venice, featuring under the focus Hybrid Body – Poetic Body among others works by Yoko Ono, Valie Export, Hermann Nitsch, Ilija Šoškić, Jan Fabre, Lee Wen, Boris Nieslony, Jill Orr, and a number of international emerging and established artists such as Nelda Ramos, Manuel Vason, Jason Lim, Gonzalo Rabanal, Prem Sarjo, Joseph Ravens, Helena Goldwater. Since 2014, the project continued at Palazzo Mora in Venice, and presented under the focus Ritual Body – Political Body live and in exhibition performance works by Joseph Beuys, Allen Ginsberg, Vito Acconci, Tehching Hsieh, Chris Burden, Terry Fox (artist), Zhang Huan, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Alastair MacLennan, Carolee Schneemann, Ulay, Tania Bruguera, Regina José Galindo, Adina Bar-On, and many others. [28] [29] [30] [31] In 2016, the Trilogy of the Body concluded with Fragile Body – Material Body, with works live and in exhibition among others by Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca, Franko B, ORLAN, Stelarc, Marina Abramović, John Baldessari, John Cage, Sophie Calle, Mona Hatoum, Paul McCarthy, Ana Mendieta, Charlotte Moorman & Nam June Paik, Otto Mühl & Hermann Nitsch, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Mike Parr, Bill Viola, Andy Warhol & Jørgen Leth, Lawrence Weiner, and many more. [32] . [33] . [34] Since 2017, the project has changed its format and presents the international educational program with residential character Co-Creation Live Factory, founded on the principles of artistic collaboration, cooperation and temporary artistic community. [35]
The performance section curated by VestAndPage had been presented in various venues in Prague in October 2011. The curatorial line concentrated on radical transparency and eco-intelligence in contemporary performance art, presenting performances by seven female artists. [36]
In 2010, VestAndPage began a project called FRAGILE global performance chain journey, a global art initiative with over 750 artists from 63 countries working together travel one fragile object one time around the globe. [37] The visionary project demands patience and collaboration, reflecting on fragile states, social responsibility, and connection between people.
Theoretical essays and prose works in English language:
Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a public in a fine art context in an interdisciplinary mode. Also known as artistic action, it has been developed through the years as a genre of its own in which art is presented live. It had an important and fundamental role in 20th century avant-garde art.
Wolfgang Tillmans is a German photographer. His diverse body of work is distinguished by observation of his surroundings and an ongoing investigation of the photographic medium’s foundations.
Matthew Barney is an American contemporary artist and film director who works in the fields of sculpture, film, photography and drawing. His works explore connections among geography, biology, geology and mythology as well as notable themes of sex, intercourse, and conflict. His early pieces were sculptural installations combined with performance and video. Between 1994 and 2002, he created The Cremaster Cycle, a series of five films described by Jonathan Jones in The Guardian as "one of the most imaginative and brilliant achievements in the history of avant-garde cinema." He is also known for his projects Drawing Restraint 9 (2005), River of Fundament (2014) and Redoubt (2018).
Jannis Kounellis was a Greek Italian artist based in Rome. A key figure associated with Arte Povera, he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome.
Willoughby Sharp was an American artist, independent curator, independent publisher, gallerist, teacher, author, and telecom activist. Avalanche published interviews they conducted with contemporary artists such as Vito Acconci, Dennis Oppenheim and Yvonne Rainer. Sharp also was contributing editor to four other publications: Impulse (1979–1981); Video magazine (1980–1982); Art Com (1984–1985), and the East Village Eye (1984–1986). He published three monographs on contemporary artists, contributed to many exhibition catalogues, and wrote on art for Artforum, Art in America, Arts magazine, Laica Journal, Quadrum and Rhobo. He was editor of the Public Arts International/Free Speech documentary booklet in 1979. Sharp received numerous grants, awards, and fellowships; both as an individual or under the sponsorship of non-profit arts organizations.
Doug Aitken is an American multidisciplinary artist. Aitken's body of work ranges from photography, print media, sculpture, and architectural interventions, to narrative films, sound, single and multi-channel video works, installations, and live performance. He currently lives in Venice, California, and New York City.
Kimathi Donkor is a London-based contemporary British artist whose paintings are known for their exploration of global, black histories. His work is exhibited and collected by international museums, galleries and biennials including London's National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum, the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennial, the 29th São Paulo Art Biennial and the 15th Sharjah Biennial. He is of Ghanaian, Anglo-Jewish and Jamaican family heritage, and his figurative paintings depict "African diasporic bodies and souls as sites of heroism and martydom, empowerment and fragility...myth and matter".
Per Hüttner is a Swedish visual artist who lives and works in Paris. He is mostly known for his photographic work and for his interactive, changing and travelling exhibition projects. A number of monographs about his practice has been published including Per Hüttner, 2003; I am a Curator, 2004; Repetitive Time 2006, Xiao Yao You2006, Democracy and Desire 2007. The Imminent Interviews 2010 and The Quantum Police 2011.
Tracey Rose is a South African artist who lives and works in Johannesburg. Rose is best known for her performances, video installations, and photographs.
Richard Grayson is a British artist, writer and curator. His art practice encompasses installation, video, painting and performance. He investigates ways that narratives shape our understandings of the world. His art and curatorial practice focus on narrative and the visual arts, belief systems and material expression, and ways cultural practices allow translation between the subjective and social/political realms.
Manfred "KILI" Kielnhofer is an Austrian painter, sculptor, designer and photographer. Due to his antisemitic statements in connection with the planned vaccination to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous of his works of art were removed from public space.
Gaspare Manos is an Italian painter and sculptor. His work traces the boundary between abstraction and figurative art.
Diane Victor, is a South African artist and print maker, known for her satirical and social commentary of contemporary South African politics.
Uemon Ikeda is the professional name of Tatsuo Ikeda, a Japanese artist and painter. Uemon Ikeda lives and works in Rome, Italy.
Cassils is a performance artist, body builder, and personal trainer from Montreal, Quebec, Canada now based in Los Angeles, California, United States. Their work uses the body in a sculptural fashion, integrating feminism, body art, and gay male aesthetics. Cassils is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital Grant, a United States Artists Fellowship, a California Community Foundation Visual Artist Fellowship (2012), several Canada Council for the Arts grants, and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship. Cassils is gender non-conforming, transmasculine, and goes by singular they pronouns.
Kimsooja was born in Daegu, South Korea. Kimsooja is a multi-disciplinary conceptual artist who travels between her three homes and places of work in New York City, Paris, and Seoul. In 1980 Kim graduated with a B.F.A in Painting from Hong-Ik University, Seoul and continued to pursue her M.F.A there, obtaining the degree in 1984 at the age of 27. Her origin as a painter was a crucial starting point for the development of her art. That same year, she received a scholarship to study art at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, where she studied Printmaking. Her first solo exhibition was held in 1988 at Gallery Hyundai, Seoul. Currently, her work is featured in countless international museums and galleries as well as public art fairs and other spaces. Her practice combines performance, film, photo, and site-specific installation using textile, light, and sound. Kimsooja's work investigates questions concerning the conditions of humanity, while engaging issues of aesthetics, culture, politics, and the environment. Her principle of ‘non-doing’ and ‘non-making,’ which follows a conceptual and structural investigation of performance through modes of mobility and immobility, inverts the notion of the artist as the predominant actor.
Kent Tate is a Canadian artist and filmmaker living in British Columbia. Tate is known for his single-channel video installation works.
Pilvi Takala is a performance artist presenting candid camera as art. Takala won the Dutch Prix de Rome in 2011 and the Emdash Award in 2013. Her works have been exhibited in various exhibitions worldwide, including London, Aarhus and Glasgow. She is known best for being in time-based media. In 2022, Takala represented Finland in the 59th Venice Biennale.
Susanna Gyulamiryan, Armenian curator, art critic and feminist scholar. She is the appointed curator of the Pavilion of the Republic of Armenia at 58th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (2019). Gyulamiryan is co-founder and the president of the non-governmental organization “Art and Cultural Studies Laboratory” (ACSL), and artistic director of the “Art Commune” International Artist-in-Residence Program. The “Art Commune” is a general member of the Res Artis worldwide network of artist residencies (resartis.org). Gyulamiryan is a (board) member of AICA-Armenia. She has led courses in Gender Studies and Feminist Art [Theory and Practice] at the Department of Fine Arts, Armenian Open University, and has also carried out MA course in Gender Studies at Yerevan State University, Department of Cultural Studies. She worked as a contributing editor and leader of the monthly columns “The Name of Art” and “Art Situations” at “CinemArt” –the journal on cinematography and contemporary art. The circle of Gyulamiryan's professional interests and studies embraced feminist art, participatory /community art and art of social and political engagement in conjunction with civil and political activism.
Louise Liliefeldt is a Canadian artist primarily working in performance and painting. She was born in South Africa and currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada. Liliefeldt’s artistic practice draws directly from her lived experience and is apparent in the use of symbol, colour and material in her work. Other influences include Italian, Latin and Eastern European horror films, surrealism and African cinema. Taken as a whole, Liliefeldt’s work is an embodied investigation of the culture and politics of identity, as influenced by collective issues such as gender, race and class. Her performance work has developed through many prolific and specific periods.