Performance making is a mode of enquiring about culture and a strategy to respond to societal emergencies. Collective acts of thought and expression are an existential urgency as they broaden our understanding of who we are. As the world grappled with lockdowns, fear has permeated our very beings. Notes from Isolation embodies an investigative journey wherein Andrea Pagnes —who, with Verena Stenke, forms the artist duo VestAndPage— explores the essence of existence during the COVID-19 pandemic. He then shares his notes in distant encounters with artists, poets and philosophers friends who navigate the non-linear realms: Marilyn Arsem, Lois Keidan, Joseph Morgan Schofield, Franko B, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Stelarc, Timothy Morton, Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, and eventually Ron Athey revisiting a conversation they had a while ago. At last, performance matters: politics and science to dissect, recurring patterns of suffering and pain to surpass, religion, colonialism, and gender fluidity found a voice within the societal crises that COVID-19 accentuated. Multiple remote visions and divergent creative thinking are pooled to inspect reality while caring for humanity, as to perhaps find a way out.

‘They close the glass door behind me and say I cannot leave this area. They gave me a blue protective mask and said I must wear it whenever I exit the room or someone enters it. The mask I have to wear closes my mouth but not my eyes. The border is a transparent glass door. We can look to the other side but not cross over. I let go a quiet steeping in being. Time makes me the process.’ — Verena Stenke.

Contemporary Theatre Review Volume 32 Issue Number 1 February 2022

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Contemporary Theatre Review Volume 31 Issue Number 3 August 2021

A trilogy of hybrid art films of collaborative performances in epic locations around the world. Included the three films (Performances at the End of the World, Performances at the Holy Centre, Performances at the Core of the Looking-Glass) and a text about the project.

Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey presents the first critical overview of this major artist’s work. It demonstrates how Athey foresaw and precipitated the central place afforded they body and identity politics in art and critical theory in the 1990s and beyond.

Super 8 film was made at the Festival de l’Etrange, Vidéotheque de Paris. Produced by Homemade FIlms.

Part of LADA Screens 6.

A specially filmed conversation between Ron Athey and writer Jennifer Doyle. Filmed in LA for LADA Screens by Brittany Neimeth.

Part of LADA Screens 6.

Thirty authors highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched gender binary. 

Composed in the twelfth century in north-eastern Iran, this great mystical poem is among the most significant of all works of Persian literature. 

Translated by Sholeh Wolpé

Shows why cognitive injustice underlies all other dimensions; global social justice is not possible without global cognitive justice.