WITHOUT TUITION OR RESTRAINT

Performance of 5 days and 4 nights
The Exchange Gallery, Penzance (UK)
In occasion of Performance Transition, curated by Blair Todd.
November 2011

Without Tuition or Restraint is a durational performance experiment about the idea of freedom, in which Andrea Pagnes is jailed inside a dog crate in the gallery space for five days and four nights consecutively. Verena Stenke is closed inside the gallery where the cage is set. The gallery is open to the public during opening hours. Stenke executes one durational action each day: the first day she runs in the space for eight hours straight, the second day she wool-wraps herself onto a chair hanging from the ceiling, the third day she nails herself with her dresses on the wall, the fourth day she stitches herself inside a bed, the final day she walks the space blindfolded carrying an hourglass. Pagnes interchanges in some moments with the visitors of the gallery.

"Without tuition or restraint" are the conclusive words of a quote by Irish political theorist Edmund Burke, who argued in the 18th Century that "freedom without wisdom and virtue is the worst of all evils, nothing but folly, vice and madness, without tuition or restraint."

The performance has been initially inspired by the book "The Fundamentals of Defectology" by L.S. Vygotsky (1929). The first performance experiment debuted at the Maschinenhaus Theater (Berlin) in 2007, in collaboration with Isole Comprese Teatro (Florence). It developed in a long durational performance in 2011, in which the artist duo spent 5 days to examine spatial, psychological and emotional cages.
Dissecting how contemporary precariousness and hypocritical attitudes deteriorates relationships and jails our minds, the work researches if when there is a boarder between you and me, there might still be no separation between me and you. During the performance, while the man is concretely imprisoned inside a dog cage, the woman's jail is her behavior and daily actions.

Photo by Simone Donati

See: http://www.vest-and-page.de/#!without-tuition-or-restraint/c21nj