Alena Starostina & Ivan Nikolaev are performative and visual artists based in Dresden, Germany. They were both born in Saint Petersburg. In 2007, they graduated from the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts with a Master’s degree. In 2010, they co-founded the performative collective “theatre post,” which, over the next ten years, became one of the leading representatives of experimental theater in Russia. They worked on plays by contemporary playwrights and also created their own original productions. A significant milestone in their artistic development was their work with pieces by John Cage, Alvin Lucier, and Belarusian playwright Pavel Pryazhko. They have participated in numerous regional and international festivals. In 2022, they emigrated to Germany, where they founded “aliveduo” and continued to develop their artistic practice.