APL in Winter Semester 2024/25

APL Studio, 15th March, 2024

FILM SCREENING & Q&A

19:15 – 19:45 LICHTHÖHE

20:00 – 21:15 STRATA

LICHTHÖHE, FILM, 30 min, 2022

Peter Kozek & Thomas Hörl

together with Victor Jaschke

Photo credit: LICHTHÖHE, Peter Kozek & Thomas Hörl together with Victor Jaschke, filmstill, 2022

LICHTHÖHE explores the layers of an architectural-tectonic structure in which the history of the earth and the history of mankind, awe and consumption, tradition and a state of emergency overlap. In the summer of 2020, while the High Alpine Road is in operation, images will be created that reference the symbolic repertoire of the entire Alpine region. At the same time, a film crew captures the event in digital image sequences and shifts the perspective on what is seen: are the crisp, clear clouds in the sky the result of elaborate night filming technology or merely telltale signs of an old film trick, American Night? 

(Excerpt from a text by Florian Ronc)

http://kozek-hoerlonski.com/projects/lichthohe/

STRATA, Film, 75 minutes, English with SDH subtitles in English, 2024

VestAndPage

Photo credit: STRATA, Vestand Page, filmstill: daz disley, 2024

A film of philosophical, poetic action, “STRATA” blends film and performance art to explore the fascinating history of caves as sites of knowledge-making and art creation. Through interdisciplinary processes, artists and researchers investigate the connection between the human body and the geological depth of subsurface environments. The project focuses on the prehistoric caves of the Swabian Jura, where Ice Age humans created the oldest known examples of human figurative sculptures. Coming together to look into the river of human civilisation and to share what they had found, the collective of artists irradiate concepts of time, ecological intelligence and politics through performances for the camera. The film pinholes a perspective on a world where art, science and multiple perspectives nourish each other in co-creative processes. Nestled inside the dark subsurfaces of the land, the human body and stratified societies are tied in continuity to the geological, beheld through a lens of queer ecology. The caves are the symbiotic realms to dance between embodiment and scrutiny, the unseen and the unforeseen, the oppressed and unspoken, the forgotten and the repressed. www.stratafilm.de

Verena Stenke and Andrea Pagnes work together as VestAndPage internationally in performance art, performance-based film, writing, publishing and temporary artistic community projects for generative inquiry and collective imaginings. For over a decade, VestAndPage have explored performance art and filmmaking as phenomena through their collaborative multimedia art practice, artistic research and curatorial projects. They have produced performance-based art and films, among others, under Antarctic glaciers, at the Himalayan foothills, in the vastness of Tierra del Fuego, in military enclaves, or inside prehistoric cave systems. In a psychogeography of symbiotic realms, they move between embodiment and research, the unseen and the unforeseen, the oppressed and unspoken, the forgotten and the repressed. Their art practice is contextual and focuses on art’s liminal, spectral and ritual nature. Their works have been presented at various sites, museums, galleries, theatres, and cinemas worldwide, and they share their methodology on collaborative performance and filmmaking in master classes and as lecturers at various art academies. They are the founders and directors of the Venice International Performance Art Week, and their research and poetic writings have been extensively published and translated for international readers. www.vest-and-page.de

A VestAndPage production, Germany, 2021/24

Conceived, written, directed and produced by VestAndPage (Verena Stenke, Andrea Pagnes)

With Aldo Aliprandi, Marianna Andrigo, Andreas Bauer Kanabas, Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Giorgia De Santi, Francesca Fini, Nicola Fornoni, La Saula, Stephan Knies, Fenia Kotsopoulou, Boris Nieslony, Andrea Pagnes, Ralf Peters, Enok Ripley, Sara Simeoni, Marcel Sparmann, Verena Stenke, Susanne Weins. Music by PYUR and Woob.

Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the German Federal Government Commissioner of Culture and the Media.

Realized in collaboration with the Museum of Prehistory in Blaubeuren, Museum Ulm, Cojote Outdoor, EntrAxis e.V., A.P.S. Studio Contemporaneo, Live Arts Cultures.

With the support of UNESCO World Heritage: Caves and Ice Age Art of the Swabian Alb, State Office for Cultural Heritage of Baden-Wuerttemberg, ForstBW, Blauwald GmbH & Co KG, Stadt Blaubeuren, City of Schelklingen, City of Grabenstetten, City of Asselfingen, Museum association Schelklingen, Urgeschichte Hautnah, Tress Gastronomie/Wimsener cave. Thanks to to the University of Exeter Research Network “Rock/Body: Performative Interfaces between the geologic and the body”, especially Nigel Clarke, João Florêncio and Timothy Morton.