VestAndPage
CO-CREATION LIVE FACTORY
TUTORS
Poetics of Relations
To perform through a Poetics of Relations is a matter of existence. Our conceptual, situation-responsive and collaborative body-based performances are in the light of the creation of universal meanings and new imagery. Our laboratorial process revolves around a range of techniques reflecting our backgrounds along the interface of visual arts, performing arts, experimental and Social Theatre and creative writings. Our approach to performance matters aims to empower emotional intelligence, readiness, responsiveness, empathy, awareness, notions of critical, creative and divergent thinking, including mindful risk-assessment.
We will work on the body as a poetic and imaginary landscape, using the three bodies (physical, mental and spiritual) as primary artistic tools. Notions of temporalities, memory strata, failure and fragility of the individual and the collective within social and environmental spheres serve to approach themes such as: trust in change, endurance, union, pain sublimation and risk-taking, in a poetic bodily approach to art practice with a focus on universal human experiences.
Verbal and nonverbal communication, the personal inner archive, emotional drive, ecological intelligence and the study of the archetypes are to enforce endurance, presence, condition, the Self, independence, and trust. Insight into more practical subjects include the art of sustaining a life as an artist, and how to build temporary artistic communities to find innovative approaches for new modes of existence and art making. The classes are co-tutored by Marcel Sparmann.
Be open, blind, silent, loud, quick, light, slow, humble, determined, collective, to inspire yourself and the others.
Since 2006, German artist Verena Stenke and Venetian artist and writer Andrea Pagnes have been working together as VestAndPage, generating art in the mediums of live performance, performance-based film, writing, publishing and with temporary artistic community projects. Their collaborative practice has roots in contemporary visual and conceptual art, classical, oriental and social theatre, martial arts, philosophy, anthropology, anthropoetics, political science, the study of rites, myths, religions, particularly Sufism, the Yoga darshana, alchemy and iconology. Animated by a nomadic, confrontational spirit, they apply the themes of acceptance, resistance, endurance and union with a poetic bodily approach to art practice, examining notions of fragility, vulnerability and failure of the individual and the collective within different social and environmental spheres. Exploring what, as human beings, we still have to offer, VestAndPage question the boundaries between the interior and exterior aspects of our existence. They are the conceivers and the independent curatorial force behind the VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK. www.vest-and-page.de
ARTISTS 2017 Sylvie Barbier (TW/FR) • Stefan Biere (DE) • Madeleine Virginia Brown (UK) • James Thomas Bullimore (UK) • Bruno Camargo (BR/IT) • Don Chow (CA) • Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu (TR) • Erin Devine (US) • Samira Engel (DE) • Julha Franz (BR) • Marisa Gareffa (AU) • Ria Jade Hartley (UK) • Paola Kodra (AL) • Marie Künne (DE) • Gerhard Liska (AT) • Nancy Gewolb Mayanz (CL) • Ashley-Louise McNaughton (UK) • Yuan Mor'O Ocampo (PH) • Daniela Francesca Lillo Olivares (CL) • Eva Pyrnokoki (GR) • Daiane Rafaela (BR) • Enok Ripley (CA) • Jewel A Rob (BD) • Sara Simeoni (IT) • Alex Spyke (RS) • Alex Talamo (AU)
ARTISTS 2020 Norhaizad Adam (SG) • Ingrid Adriaans (NL) • Ronald Bal (NL) • E. M. Alysse Bowd (CA) • Fay Burnett (UK) • Mitchell Chalifoux (CA) • Renzo de Pablo (AN) • Tyler Hallett (US) • Sylwia Hanff (PL) • Arturo Herrera (US) • Allison I. Hournak (US) • Frauke Huhn (DE) • Andreja Kargačin (RS) • Carmen Lafran (IT) • Magdalena Leite & Aníbal Conde (UY) • Tess Martens (CA) • Ashley-Louise McNaughton (UK) • Philemon Mukarno (ID/NL) • Rebecca O'Brien (UK) • Rachel Parry (UK) • Anna Valeska Pohl (DE) • Kahn Jinoh Ryu (KR) • Amber Helene Müller St. Thomas (CA) • Pierce Starre (UK) • Jessica van Deursen (NL) • Emma Varker (AU) • Juan Carlos Villalba del Castillo (ES)
CO-CREATION LIVE FACTORY is for those who trust in change.
For those who are ready to challenge their own practice.
It is for the overstretched global bodies searching for a home or on pilgrimage. For those to whom the surreal is familiar, those who dance on the limits hand in hand.
For those who go to spaces of hidden beauty and scan into the flesh of dream matter— visionary poets, artists and performers pushed by an urgency. For those who reconcile with the mystery to make and let things coexist, for anything that remains alone is just a nothing per se.
For those who seek to express, not to impress, and take risks in the name of seeking new images. For those who are on a journey skittering through visible landscapes and invisible places, actual places and imaginary places.
This is a nomadism aiming to empower one's own art and openness, leaving subtle traces, structuring temporary autonomous zones. It is to take action, because each one of us has important stories to tell, for we are stories until we die. And then again, 'Remember all, forget all.'
Verena Stenke & Andrea Pagnes (VestAndPage)
VestAndPage. Photograph © Alexander Harbaugh, Istanbul, 2016.