VSSL Studio Collection

Shot in a breath between lockdowns in 2021, these teeming forms is a sensate and mythic film, imagining a process of wilding – of entering the land and being opened by it. Memory and desire, history and loss, future and fantasy become porous, contributing to a textural and sensate meditation on living.

Commissioned by ]performance s p a c e[. Presented by ]ps[, ICA (London), VSSL studio, Chisenhale Studioes (2021) and Venice International Performance Art Week (2023). Funded by Arts Council England.

Single-channel video work; duration: 28.33

ouTcasT (2018) is a performance for The Rising, a programme from ]performance s p a c e [ in Folkestone, Kent.
The documentation was screened by LADA for Land, Material, Memory at Tate Britain.

The Hologram is a feminist health militia that produces networks where we can practice skills like trust, communication, and cooperation that will help us outlast capitalism.

Writing by Shaun Caton surrounded by images of Shaun Caton's analogue montages "Night Life 11" (2024) and "Night Life 30" (2024).

Appears in COMPOST: Issue 2 Accidents and Emergencies

I Love You Too is a project from a visual artist focused on the writing of letters, shifting the focus from how a community uses a library to how it creates one – a library, in this case, of love. The stories in this book were told during the COVID-19 pandemic by more than 100 people from across Manchester. Through in-person and online interviews with 11 writers, their testimonies were transformed into this collection of love letters. To ensure all those involved felt safe and supported while sharing their deeply personal stories, well-being managers were on hand at every stage of the process. By way of thanks, each participant was gifted a portrait created at the time of their interview. Thank you to the people of Manchester for sharing these beautiful and personal stories with us.

South African artist Kemang Wa Lehulere spent MIF19 in residence in Manchester’s network of libraries – and two years on, published I Love You Too, a beautiful book inspired by the time he spent in the city.

At the start of 2021, Wa Lehulere invited more than 100 people from across Manchester to share with us their love stories: to people, to places, even to possessions. Through a series of online and in-person meetings, a group of 11 Manchester writers put their words on to the page. The result is I Love You Too, a personal, powerful and inspiring 232-page hardback book of love letters rooted in our city – and the first in an international series.

Video documentation of an online artist talk given by Miranda Whall on 4th July, 2022. This conversation followed an online screening of Miranda Whall’s film Crossed Paths – Scots Pine (2022). Following the talk, there is a Q&A with the artist led by Chinasa Vivian Ezugha.

Crossed Paths – Scots Pine (2022) is a film documenting the artist crawling through the centre of Glasgow to the area hosting the COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference in November 2021, carrying a 6-year-old potted Scots Pine on her back.

Audio documentation of an evening considering durational performance art with Marilyn Arsem on Friday 18th April, 2025 at The Garrett Centre.

For this special event, Marilyn presented an artist talk reflecting on her body of work and sharing her research on performance art and time. Following the talk, there was a Q&A chaired by curator Joseph Morgan Schofield.

This event was part of CEREMONY: A Festival of Performance, presented by Future Ritual, in April, 2025.

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.

Training Utopias

Performance Research Volume 25 Issue No. 8 December 2020

Pg173-174

Training Utopias

Performance Research Volume 25 Issue No. 8 December 2020

Pg42-50

Contemporary Theatre Review, Volume 31 Issue Number 4 November 2021

Documentation of the evening which featured a screening of short films and performance documentation by artists working around ritual, performance and queer futurity.