"Curating Contemporary Art" Seminar Program
Artist Talk: Will You Stand With Me and Hold My Hand? Critical Constellations in Curating Performance Art
Artists: VestAndPage
Time: 6:00-7:30 pm
In this seminar, Verena Stenke and Andrea Pagnes, as artist duo VestAndPage, will share their collaborative approach to curation as a social practice of collective imaginings. In times of distress on both lands and people, performance art provides an ecological model of artistic practice that aims to move beyond modes of exploitation and marginalisation. Ephemeral and immaterial, performance art is rooted in a strong sense of communing in socio-political urgencies and conjuring momentum. Verena and Andrea will introduce examples of their decentralised constellations of critical encounters, which have formed part of their art productions over the past decade. Their curations of fluid collectives focus on the adaptive function of art, especially addressing the ecologies of loss and collective mourning, by allowing for the sharing of reflexive emotions. They give insight into their core practices of Collective Performance Operas and Temporary Artistic Communities, which inform their understanding of collaborative formats of art-making and are essential in creating opportunities in production and pedagogy. Looking into their embodied philosophies of opening, sharing and holding inclusive spaces for radical art production, this seminar also includes case studies of the nine editions of the Venice International Performance Art Week founded and curated by them.
About VestAndPage
Since 2006, artist Verena Stenke and artist and writer Andrea Pagnes have been working worldwide as VestAndPage in collaborative performance art, performance-based film, publishing, and temporary artistic community projects for generative inquiry and collective imaginings. Artists of the tender collaborations, for over a decade, VestAndPage have explored performance art and film as phenomena through their transdisciplinary art practice, artistic research and curatorial projects. Their art practice is contextual and focuses on art's liminal, spectral and ritual nature. In an ongoing poetics of relations, they move through encounters with critical landscapes and social spheres. Their collaborative practice has roots in Applied Theatre and Theatre of the Middle East, literature, philosophy, political sciences, and visual art. They share their practice as lecturers, mentors and visiting artists in universities internationally, and their practice-led research and poetic writings have been extensively published and translated for international readers.
In 2012, they founded and have since curated the Venice International Performance Art Week, a globally renowned platform dedicated to the promotion and exploration of performance art. Focusing on the production and documentation of the ephemeral and immaterial, the project showcases archives of seminal pieces alongside live programs of performance works of emerging and established artists. Held in Venice, Italy, each edition centres around a specific theme and format, as performance art is rooted in a strong sense of communing cultural, social, or political urgencies and conjuring momentum. With its community-based and artist-run curation, the project has gained international acclaim for supporting artists and contributing to the evolution of performance art as a critical and experimental medium.
* To learn conditions of participation in a single seminar, we would kindly ask you to send an e-mail to apply@curatingcontemporaryart.org address noting the required seminar details. Single seminar participation fee is 650 TL.
* The program will take place on the online platform Zoom.