Verena Stenke

Verena Stenke is a German artist, filmmaker and curator. Since 2006, she has worked with Venetian-born artist and writer Andrea Pagnes as VestAndPage internationally in performance art, performance-based film, writing, publishing and temporary artistic community projects. Since 2010, she has been devoted to experimental performance-based filmmaking, producing feature-length films, silent films, numerous shorts, art videos and interview series. In 2020, she published the manifesto on performance-based filmmaking: “Poetics of Relations”. Stenke trained and worked as a Special FX make-up artist, and stage and costume designer. She studied visual arts, Applied Theatre, and Theatre, Rites and Dances of the Middle East before turning to performance art and filmmaking.

VestAndPage’s independent filmmaking and art practice is contextual and situation-responsive, conceived psychogeographically in response to natural surroundings, social contexts, historical sites and architectures. They are devoted to a poetic approach to experimental, philosophical filmmaking through which to examine the evolution from original documentation of performative acts toward complexly contextual, non-linear storytelling. Rooted both in film history and performance art history, their aesthetic has been termed magical realism, surrealism, hyperrealism, and psychomagical. They further commit to film as a mnemonic archive for testimonial purposes and produce conversations and interviews on existential topics with people from the arts, culture and science.

Mentor and Artist in Residence July 2024

Image 19 Monologue