DEFIBRILLATOR is proud to present THOU TWIN OF SLUMBER: HISTO by German/Italian duo VestAndPage on SEPTEMBER 14, 2013 at 8PM at DEFIBRILLATOR GALLERY, 1136 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago. There is a $10 requested donation at the door.

VestAndPage is a collaboration between German artist Verena Stenke and Italian artist Andrea Pagnes. They have been working together to create performance art, films, visual art, and creative writing since 2006. They are the independant curatorial force behind the acclaimed Venice Internaitonial Performance Art Week. Their live performances have been presented across Europe, Asia and the Americas, and are mostly process-led and conceived psycho-geographically for architecture or in response to natural and historical sites. Interested in the fragility of the individual and its surroundings, they research private, social and contextual spheres through precariousness, transformation, liminality and authenticity.

In their current Performance cycle THOU TWIN OF SLUMBER, VestAndPage are inspired by J. S. Bach’s cantata “Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen” (1726), and the closing line, “Come O Death Thou Twin Of Slumber.” Invoking death, the twin brother of sleep, this performance cycle consists of seven parts realized on a 2012/13 world tour. The cycle began at the Boston Centre for the Arts, Boston (‘Caterpillar’), followed by the Cyprus International Performance Art Festival (‘Cocoon’), Grace Exhibition Space, New York (‘Chrysalis’), IPA Istanbul (‘Pupae’), and now they present the fifth work of the cycle, ‘Histo’, at Defibrillator Gallery, Chicago. Afterwords, they go to the Biennale of Performance Art, Vancouver (‘Hemolymph’), and will have their final 7 hour durational performance at the Kunsthalle Helsinki (‘Imago’).

THOU TWIN OF SLUMBER investigates stasis, sleep and slumber as liminal spaces. Inspried by two figures from Greek mythology, the twin brothers Hypnos (Sleep) and Thanatos (Death), and embracing the Moth as an archetypical symbol of life and transformation. VestAndPage will invite the public for THOU TWIN OF SLUMBER: HISTO, to be active participants. Those who choose to participate will explore blindness, perception, imagination, memory and metamorphosis. Those that decide to keep their sense of sight, will observe the delicate process and take upon themselves a responsibility towards the others within the fragile terrain.

“Through the use of highly visceral actions, some that even appeared to defy physical reality, VestAndPage challenged ideas about what it means to be in a body and conjured romantic notions of what can be experienced beyond the physical realm.”  Sandrine Schaefer about ‘Thou Twin of Slumber I: Caterpillar’, Boston, 2012, on The Present Tense

Committed to presenting a vast range of styles and forms of time-based art, DEFIBRILLATOR (a.k.a. dfb or DFBRL8R) is a non-profit 501c3 arts organization dedicated to fostering local talent while invigorating Chicago with artists from around the world. Contextualizing performance within visual art, we mostly present action-based or conceptual work by artists who look to the body, objects, space, and time for inspiration, research and practice.

PHOTO BY MonikaSobcz
For more information about the artists, please visit  www.vest-and-page.de.

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