Alumni news: VestAndPage Present MELTING THE FRAME at INEFF 2026

VestAndPage. “Ice walking.” Performance for video. Still from Deserts Black and Blue, 2025, © VestAndPage.

We are pleased to share that Artica Svalbard alumni Andrea Pagnes and Verena Stenke (VestAndPage) will present a conference paper at the International Network of Experimental Fiction Filmmaking (INEFF) conference at the University of Salford in Manchester, UK, taking place 18–19 June 2026.

Their paper, MELTING THE FRAME: Performance-Based Filmmaking as Experimental Fiction and Somatic Knowledge, draws extensively on artistic research developed during their residency at Artica Svalbard in 2025, alongside work created in other liminal and extreme environments.

The self-reflective paper explores VestAndPage’s performance-based filmmaking as a form of Experimental Fiction Filmmaking, where fiction emerges through embodied action, material interaction, and site-responsive processes rather than predetermined narratives. Working across performance art, moving image, and live art practices, their films are shaped through collaboration between bodies, environments, materials, and the camera itself.

Drawing particularly on recent works developed in Svalbard’s Arctic landscapes, the paper examines how performance-based filmmaking can function as a somatic mode of knowledge generation — where vulnerable materials such as ice, meltwater, coal, breath, and glass become part of a process through which fiction, documentary trace, and embodied experience coexist.

Presented within the context of experimental cinema, expanded performance, and Practice-as-Research, MELTING THE FRAME considers questions of authorship, material agency, relational ethics, and cinematic presence, challenging conventional filmmaking structures in favour of co-creation, unpredictability, and care.

We are delighted to see research initiated through Artica’s residency programme continuing to evolve within international artistic and academic contexts, and congratulate Andrea and Verena on sharing this work at INEFF 2026.

You can learn more about the conference and download a copy of the paper here.