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momentum IV – How to survive the pandemics?” | Andrea Pagnes in a poetic exchange with Guillermo Gómez-Peña

momentum

Momentum depends on the frame of reference.

In any inertial frame, it is a constant quality.

If a closed system is not affected by external forces,

its total linear momentum does not change.

​In this series of videos, VestAndPage host conversations under existential focus with inspiring people from the arts, culture and science. In the form of shared contemplations, these dialogues search not to battle through opinions, but to raise crucial questions on our contemporaneity. The dialogues aspire to not accept any answer as ultimate, to allow for uncertainty, and to converge on a common ground in which shared knowledge is the fundament for continuous queries. Essential questions on existential concerns dig into the place of action in daily life. They touch subjects of humanity such as time, care, dualisms, love, transformation, consciousness, conflict, nature, and art. These encounters consist of people sharing their visions through unconventional, critical and divergent creative thinking, inspecting and dissecting contemporaneity while caring for humanity. 

A VestAndPage production 2021

In collaboration with Venice International Performance Art Week and EntrAxis e.V.

momentum IV – How to survive the pandemics?” | Andrea Pagnes in a poetic exchange with Guillermo Gómez-Peña

For the fourth episode of the "momentum" series, "How to survive the pandemics?", artist and author Andrea Pagnes (VestAndPage) has been in a poetic exchange with the artist, activist and poet Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Over the course of one and a half years since February 2020, they have exchanged over a series of video meetings and online documents. They collected their poetic and philosophical considerations on what they saw evolving – testimonies of their times. We see them documenting a chronicle response to multiple pandemics, including COVID-19, the viruses of fear, racism, confinement, forced displacement and mental illness. Pagnes and Gómez-Peña shed a radical light of words onto the abysses of our times, such as white supremacy, oppression, violence, digital isolation, and ultimately: the survival of it all through art-making.

Guillermo Gómez-Peña is a performance artist, writer, activist, radical pedagogue, and artistic director of La Pocha Nostra's performance troupe. Born in Mexico City, he moved to the US in 1978, and since 1995, his three homes have been San Francisco, Mexico City and the "road". His performance work and 21 books have contributed to the debates on cultural, generational, and gender diversity, border culture and North-South relations. For over 30 years, he has been staging seminal performance art pieces. His award-winning solo performances mix experimental aesthetics, activist politics, Spanglish humour and audience participation to create a "total experience" for the audience member/reader/viewer. Gómez-Peña is currently a Patron for the London-based Live Art Development Agency and a Senior Fellow in the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics.

Welcome to the momentum of the pandemics.

+++ Dear viewer, beware of the following risks: foul language, drug use, retro identity politics, extreme machismo and over the top queerness, sophisticated dirty jokes, cigarettes and motor smoking. +++