DYAD VI: Liquid and Solid

1-hour performance in occasion of Konteksty 5 - Festival of Ephemeral Art, curated by Malgorzata Sady.
19 July 2015

The performance is the sixth chapter of DYAD, VestAndPage 2014-15 performance cycle currently in production.


"Two and two, of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. Two and two... went into the ark." ~ Genesis 7:15

The performance cycle by VestAndPage on the danger of dichotomy, attachments to dualism, and the paradox of Ego. Interested in what divides and separates us, and how divisions are applied socially and politically as mechanisms, VestAndPage look into the ability to integrate again foreground with background, and content with context. Through a series of poetic bodily images, Stenke and Pagnes question how dichotomies, polarity and dualism are being employed as effective tools of ideology, propaganda or collective manipulation.

When "Individual" or "Atom" is that which cannot be cut or divided any further into separate parts, why are we still torn by schizophrenia? What if finally the Ego is not only useless, but a paradox that we continue to uphold only to confine ourselves? What if we really are just one part completing something else? Each episode starts with the above quote and a conflictive moment between a mouse and a rabbit, both burrowers and symbols of mediation, procreation and vulnerability.

The performance cycle has been developed and presented on the 2014/2015-tour with stations in Toronto (Black and White), Amsterdam (One and Two), Zagreb (You and Me), Leipzig (Past and Present), Sokołowsko (Liquid and Solid).
The cycle will be continued through 2015: October 22-25, 2015: Arnolfini, Bristol
(Further venues tba.)

Photograph by Dominik Jedliczka, Agata Mielnicka, Norbert Wawrzyniak.