SCREENINGS
PAST
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Cinematic Festival, Ancona (IT) Preview and Q&A, October 27, 2022
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Sommerbühne am Blautopf, Blaubeuren (DE) Preview and Q&A, August, 03, 2023
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Stockholm City Film Festival (SE) Official Selection November 2023
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Infinite Present Festival, Cukrarna Gallery, Ljubljana (SI), Gallery preview, January 25, 2024
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Altered States Festival, De Regentes Theatre, Den Haag (NL) Premiere screening, February 2, 2024
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4bid Gallery | Ventilator Cinema//OT301, Amsterdam (NL), Film screening, Meet the Artists and Exhibition of audio art, visuals and artefacts generated as part of the collaborative making of the film STRATA, February 14-17, 2024
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Volkshochschule, Neckarsulm (DE), Gallery preview, March 1, 2024, 19:00
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Festival de Largos y Cortos de Santiago, Santiago de Chile (CL), March 2, 2024
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University of Applied Arts - Angewandte Performance Laboratory, Vienna (AT), March 15, 2024, 20:00
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San Antonio Independent Film Festival, TeatroCine Sebastián Cordero Espinosa, Ibbara (EC), March 19-22, 2024
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Butohpolis Festival, Warsaw (PL), May 13, 2024
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Boden International Film Festival, Boden (SE), May 15, 2024
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Mannheim Arts and Film Festival, Mannheim (DE), 2024
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Montreal Independent Film Festival, Montreal (CA), 2024
FUTURE
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International Migration & Environmental Film Festival, Toronto (CA) / ONLINE, October 9-15, 2024
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Museum of Prehistory, Blaubeuren (DE), as part of the exhibition Ice Age Creatures - Modern Perspectives on Ice Age Art, November 15, 2024 - January 12, 2025
PUBLICATIONS
"STRATA: The Research Process in the Making of a Performance-Based Film"
By Andrea Pagnes, Douglas Quin, Verena Stenke, daz disley
On: Vol. 9 No. 1-2 (2023): Performing Practice-Based Research, ISSN 2369-253744
VESTANDPAGE
Since 2006, German artist Verena Stenke and Venetian-born artist and writer Andrea Pagnes have been working together as VestAndPage internationally in performance art, performance-based film, writing, publishing and temporary artistic community projects.
VestAndPage have been devoted to experimental performance-based filmmaking through which they examine the evolution from original documentation of performative acts toward complexly contextual, non-linear storytelling. They produce their film works on-site as direct and visceral performances, which are never rehearsed or staged and happen in response to often extreme environments "familiar as a dream" (London City Nights) such as Antarctica, Patagonia, Kashmir, subterranean cave systems, or military enclaves. 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 their studio and host. They do not go to a place to tell a story; they go to a place to find its story. This approach contains the essential discourse of decolonisation: it is the land that holds us; we never own land. All persons, beings, spaces, environments or non-human bodies are equal partakers in the co-creation of a film.
Their films are outcomes of broad creative experience and research processes in which they explore so-called “thin places”: locations-in-between, where the veil between different temporalities, occurrences and stories is porous. 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 environment.
Working on performance art’s liminal, spectral and ritual nature, in their ongoing “Poetics of Relations” they apply endurance, sublimation and risk-taking with a poetic bodily approach to art practice and a focus on universal human experiences. They consider performance-based filmmaking an artistic practice that serves the body’s capacity to generate knowledge, convey meanings and shape concepts of intimate archiving, with the perceptual acting as a lens on how we view reality and the spectrum of relationships to address the social nature of representation. For them, film can delude space-time, open the unconscious as a resourceful vessel, and reveal processes and relations by linking apparently disconnected persons, objects and happenings.
Their production process involves the recollection of different elements or “shards”: a series of disconnected filmed, non-staged performance actions, poetic texts produced as stream-of-consciousness writing, foley sounds and elaborate musical soundscapes. In assembling them, these shards are placed together organically in the editing process. The new whole that is the film work aims to reveal the existing connections between these previously scattered fragments. Reduced use of digital effects such as dissolve, reverse and layering serves to unveil perceptions of realities that are not feasible in real life but that they consider elemental. Rooted in both film history and the history of performance art, VestAndPage’s aesthetic has been termed as magical realism, surrealist, hyperrealist or psychomagic. It reflects the poetic, conceptual and aesthetic influences of masters such as Maya Deren, Béla Tarr, Agnès Varda, Sergei Parajanov, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Godfrey Reggio or Werner Herzog.
They also commit to film as a mnemonic archive for testimonial purposes and produce conversations and interviews with inspiring people from the arts, culture and science on existential topics.
Since 2010, 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 their Manifesto on performance-based filmmaking: Poetics of Relations.
They are the founders and directors of the Venice International Performance Art Week, and their research and poetic writings have been extensively published and translated for international readers. They share their methodology on collaborative performance and filmmaking in masterclasses at art academies worldwide. For STRATA, they are responsible as artistic directors, producers, writers, and performers.
VESTANDPAGE
Since 2006, German artist Verena Stenke and Venetian-born artist and writer Andrea Pagnes have been working together as VestAndPage internationally in performance art, performance-based film, writing, publishing and temporary artistic community projects.
VestAndPage have been devoted to experimental performance-based filmmaking through which they examine the evolution from original documentation of performative acts toward complexly contextual, non-linear storytelling. They produce their film works on-site as direct and visceral performances, which are never rehearsed or staged and happen in response to often extreme environments "familiar as a dream" (London City Nights) such as Antarctica, Patagonia, Kashmir, subterranean cave systems, or military enclaves. 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 their studio and host. They do not go to a place to tell a story; they go to a place to find its story. This approach contains the essential discourse of decolonisation – it is the land that holds us; we never own land. All persons, beings, spaces, environments or non-human bodies are equal partakers in the co-creation of a film.
Their films are outcomes of broad creative experience and research processes in which they explore so “thin places”: locations-in-between, where the veil between different temporalities, occurrences and stories is porous. 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 environment.
Working on performance art’s liminal, spectral and ritual nature, in their ongoing “Poetics of Relations” they apply endurance, sublimation and risk-taking with a poetic bodily approach to art practice and a focus on universal human experiences. They consider performance-based filmmaking an artistic practice that serves the body’s capacity to generate knowledge, convey meanings and shape concepts of intimate archiving, with the perceptual acting as a lens on how we view reality and the spectrum of relationships to address the social nature of representation. For them, film can delude space-time, open the unconscious as a resourceful vessel, and reveal processes and relations by linking apparently disconnected persons, objects and happenings.
Their production process involves the recollection of different elements or “shards”: a series of disconnected filmed, non-staged performance actions, poetic texts produced as stream-of-consciousness writing, foley sounds and elaborate musical soundscapes. In assembling them, these shards are placed together organically in the editing process. The new whole that is the film work aims to reveal the existing connections between these previously scattered fragments. Reduced use of digital effects such as dissolve, reverse and layering serves to unveil perceptions of realities that are not feasible in real life but that they consider elemental. Rooted in both film history and the history of performance art, VestAndPage’s aesthetic has been termed magical realism, surrealism, hyperrealism or psychomagic. It reflects the conceptual and aesthetic influences of masters such as Maya Deren, Béla Tarr, Agnès Varda, Sergei Parajanov, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Godfrey Reggio or Werner Herzog.
They also commit to film as a mnemonic archive for testimonial purposes and produce conversations and interviews with inspiring people from the arts, culture and science on existential topics.
Since 2010, they have produced four feature-length films, a silent film, a trilogy of shorts, two shorts and numerous interview series and video art works. In 2020, they published their Manifesto on performance-based filmmaking: Poetics of Relations.
They are the founders and directors of the Venice International Performance Art Week, and their research and poetic writings have been extensively published and translated for international readers. They share their methodology on collaborative performance and filmmaking in masterclasses at art academies worldwide. For STRATA, they are responsible as artistic directors, producers, writers, and performers.
ARTISTS
Aldo Aliprandi Sound
Marianna Andrigo Movement
Marilyn Arsem Performance
Balaustio Costume design
Andreas Bauer Kanabas Classical bass
Anguezomo Mba Bikoro Performance
Giorgia De Santi Performance
daz disley Sound, Lighting Director, Cinematography
Francesca Fini Performance & Digital animation
Nicola Fornoni Performance
La Saula Performance
Stephan Knies Violin
Fenia Kotsopoulou Dance, Visuals, Cinematography
Boris Nieslony Performance
Ralf Peters Voice art
Enok Ripley Performance
Sara Simeoni Dance
Marcel Sparmann Performance, Production Assistance
VestAndPage Performance, Directors, Producers, Writers, Editors
Susanne Weins Voice art
Douglas Quin Sound design, Audio arts
PYUR Electronic music
Woob Electronic music
PRESS
Schwäbische Zeitung, "Performancekunst triftt Archäologie" (August 11, 2023)
Heilbronner Stimme, "Das Künstlerpaar VestAndPage produziert einen Performance-Film" (March 2021)
Südwest Presse, "Dreharbeiten mit Künstlerduo – Cosmo-Hase erforscht die Unterwelt" (April 2021)
Reutlinger General Anzeiger, "Kunstfilmdreh in der Falkensteiner Höhle bei Grabenstetten" (April 2021)
Südwest Presse, "Von Kunst und Zeit im Ur-Opernhaus" (May 2021)
Schwäbische Zeitung, "Hohle Fels: Wenn Kunst auf Wissenschaft trifft" (May 2021)
SWR2 Kultur, "Kunst und Wissenschaft: Das Filmprojekt 'Strata' in den Höhlen der Schwäbischen Alb" (May 2021)
Südwest Presse, "Magische Momente überm Blautopf" (June 2021)
Augsburger Allgemeine, "Schweben über dem Blautopf - wie ein Wasservogel" (June 2021)
Schwäbische Zeitung, "Hier schwebt eine Frau über dem Blautopf" (June 2021)
Regio-TV, "Luftakrobatik über dem Blautopf: Kunstfilm entsteht in der Region" (June 2021)
ARD, SWR Landesschau Baden-Württemberg (June 8, 2021)
Südwest Presse, "Hochkultur in tiefen Höhlen" (July 2021)