Verena Stenke

Verena Stenke (born October 18, 1981 in Bad Friedrichshall ) is a German performance and video artist and curator for performance art.

Life

Stenke lived in Neckarsulm , Baden-Württemberg until she graduated from high school , after which she studied fine arts in Heilbronn and trained as a make- up artist at the theater . After completing her training, she moved to Berlin , where in 2006 she met her partner and later husband, the Venetian artist and writer Andrea Pagnes , with whom she founded the artist duo VestAndPage and has since worked together internationally. The couple lived in Florence between 2006 and 2012, where Stenke dealt with social theater, oriental theater techniques and contemporary dance and looked for combinations of different art forms. The couple married in 2010.

The years 2010 to 2014 included stays abroad with projects and artist residencies, among others in Antarctica , America , Mexico , Venezuela , Chile , Argentina , Taiwan and Europe. There the artist produced several performance cycles as well as the art film trilogy sin∞fin The Movie and built up an international performance network.

In December 2012, Stenke and Pagnes initiated the international biennial performance art week and exhibition Venice International Performance Art Week , which Stenke is co-curating.

Stenke and Pagnes have lived in Neckarsulm and Venice since 2012.

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Stenke's backgrounds in the visual arts and theater have an influence on the body- and image-centered performances, even if she works in the direction of an overarching total work of art , a socially immediate art form. She sees her activities in the different areas of culture as a common work.

In her performance and film works, Stenke questions the topics of identity , social conditioning , historiography , the idea of unity, as well as representation and perception in a controlled world. She also examines the connection between performance art and film , as well as processes that are extended over time ( long durational performances ). Her art practice is context-related and therefore process and situation-bound: the works are designed as an untried, immediate reaction to social, urban, natural or historical conditions. In the duo work as VestAndPage, Stenke and Pagnes examine the fragility and failure of the individual and the collective in a “poetry of relationships” by illuminating topics such as communication, resistance, instability and unity through an anthro-poetic approach.

From 2010 to 2012 the duo produced the experimental art film trilogy sin∞fin The Movie through institutional co-productions . This complex visual investigation was carried out during the artists' research stays in Antarctica , Patagonia , Tierra del Fuego , Kashmir and northern India . The project moves between reality and the visionary, combines performance art with film and shows the collaborative performances of Stenke and Pagnes in epic locations around the world in the form of a trilogy. The performances reflect universal human motivations such as altruism , partnership and the transience of external circumstances and existence. After Werner Herzog, Stenke is the second artist to have produced an independent film project on the Antarctic continent.

In the performance work Without Tuition or Restraint (2011), in which the boundary between private and social spheres was examined, Stenke and Pagnes let themselves be locked in an art gallery in Penzance for five days and four nights . Andrea Pagnes was in a cage during this time, while Verena Stenke carried out a constant action every day.

In the seven-part performance cycle Panta Rhei (Asia, 2011/12), VestAndPage examined stages of transience through acted body images. In the first performance of the cycle in Singapore , the two artists drank the blood of Andrea Pagnes. He said it was the purest part of him.

In the 24-hour performance FEAR vs LOVE vs FEAR (2012), the couple lived in an empty house in Chapultepec for one day . Visitors could go in and out of the house at any time and saw the two artists in performance actions about fear and love. In preparation for the project, the duo worked out their fears and dreams with Mexican street girls in an intensive workshop project. This material was part of the performance installation and was published as a book by the Alumnos47 foundation in 2012 .

In addition to other production and educational projects, Stenke and Pagnes are the initiators and curators of the Venice International Performance Art Week (2012/2014), a biennial exhibition project that focuses on the presentation of historical and contemporary international performance art in an exhibition and live program.

In 2010, Stenke initiated the ongoing global art initiative FRAGILE global performance chain journey , in which a pane of glass is sent around the globe from artist to artist.

Awards

2008 Art Contact Prize Tirana
2010 Project funding from the Heinrich Böll Foundation
2011 Nassau Culture Prize
2011 Treviglio Video Poetry Prize
2012 scholarship from the international artist residence AIR Taipei
2012 Scholarship from the cultural program of the Argentine National Directorate of Antarctica , Buenos Aires

literature

Andrea Pagnes and Verena Stenke: “Antarctic Dream”, in: Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts: On Ice , Volume 18 Issue 6, pp. 71–80, 2014, doi : 10.1080 / 13528165.2013.908059 (English)
Valentin Torrens (Ed.): How We Teach Performance Art: University Courses and Workshop Syllabus , Madrid, Outskirt Press, 2014 (English)
Ekaterina Alvaraz Romero (Ed.): Proyecto Liquido: Fear , Madrid, Turner Libros, 2013, pp. 108–117, ISBN 978-84-15832-65-2 (Spanish / English)
Andrea Pagnes: The Fall of Faust - Considerations on Contemporary Art and Art Action , Florenz, VestAndPage press, 2010, ISBN 978-88-905161-0-8 (English)
BJCEM XIV.Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean SKOPJE 7 gates Biennial 2009 , Milan, Mondadori Electam, 2009, p. 239, ISBN 978-88-370-7167-7 (English)
Dana Altman: Art and Multiplicity - Essays on Contemporary Art . New York: Amadeo Press, 2008 (1st edition) ISBN 978-973-1980-30-0 (English)
Suzana Varvarica: Conformism Space - Muliqi Prize '07 , The Kosovo Art Gallery, Priština, 2007, pp. 162–163 (English)