The course of events – welcome
I would sum up the themes of the 2024 ANTI Festival programme in a few sentences:
The programme examines the various ways we come together and keep in touch with each other and the perspectives of belonging and outsiderness. As organisers of an art event, we spend a lot of time reflecting on the complex questions related to taking space and giving space. As a festival, we take up space in Kuopio to give it to voices that are underrepresented here.
When I was putting together the festival programme, I spent time reflecting on some of our long-term artistic partnerships and the festival’s main goals to propose which artists, artwork and partners could complement and nourish each other at ANTI Festival. Where does ANTI Festival belong and adhere to? Who/what are we already connected to and with whom/what do we lack a connection?
Artists’ actions that make you stop in your tracks, events ravaging the world, previous events in the history of the ANTI Festival and also ones in my personal history have all affected how the festival appears this year.
1
Spring 2021 / autumn 2023: ANTI Festival launches dialogue with artist Tarik Elmoutawakil to bring the Brownton Abbey project to Kuopio. After finally solving questions related to resources, their artwork still feels current and, in fact, necessary for Kuopio.
September 2023: Tiziano Cruz, an Argentine artist, invites people of Latin American background living in Kuopio to participate in the performance of their piece. The collaboration unveils the weakness of the bond between the ANTI Festival and Kuopio residents with an immigrant background, despite a handful of collaborations. Autumn Knight, a US-based artist also brings to light the fact that our audiences lack BIPOC representation.
September 2024: When Cruz performs their latest work Wayqeycuna and Elmoutawakil and their working group open the Brownton Abbey performance club celebrating disabled queer people of colour in Kuopio, we hope that this time, our invitation will also have reached you. At least we’ve done more for it this time.
2
2000: I experience a social awakening in Väinölänniemi, Kuopio and become involved in environmental activism.
2002: ANTI Festival is founded and the year 2004 local environmental activists are invited to participate in a performance that takes place in the Puijo forest.
Spring 2021: The artist Maija Hirvanen and the (now former) Artistic Director of ANTI Festival Johanna Tuukkanen launch dialogue around the HUM artwork that is still in its infancy.
Autumn 2022: The humming of HUM is still beautifully aligned with the festival’s long-term desire to strengthen the connection between the human and non-human. I invite the performance to the 2024 festival that engages in dialogue about the earth in its many different meanings.
July 2023: I experience the Dear Laila installation by Basel Zaraa, a Palestinian artist, at the Santarcangelo Festival. I shed tears leaning onto a Medieval wall in the small Italian town and hope that the piece will also find its way to Kuopio.
October 2023: The genocide againts Palestinians is taking shape. We learn how Palestinian lands were stolen and that their oppression dates all the way back to 1948.
November 2023: I write an email to Basel Zaara. The ANTI Festival demands a ceasefire in Gaza in its speech when receiving the State Prize for the Social Impact of Art.
December 2023: The Kuopio for Palestine collective is set up; Kuopio joins the international solidarity movement. I believe that the ANTI Festival can contribute to the grassroots citizen activities that are being shattered piece by piece by the Government of Finland.
3
2014: I have forgotten the site-specific art festival in my town of birth, Kuopio. I move to Itä-Pasila, Helsinki, and curate a small art event in the public spaces of my neighbourhood. I am fully enraptured by the manifestations and experiences of performance art taking place in public spaces.
2022: As the new Director of the ANTI Festival, I decide to increase the number of artworks created for public spaces, which has declined from the early days of the festival. I realise that this change, this return to our roots, will take some time.
2023: For several years, ANTI has been serving as a platform for an Aalto University course in arts education. We update our cooperation model: from now on, we explicitly support the students’ work in public spaces.
2024: I like to think that it only takes one artist with clear reasoning for operating in the public space to lift magical dust from the concrete we tread on every day. L. Puska and Rhiannon Armstrong as such artists. You have permission to follow them in the streets!
4
Autumn 2019: ANTI Festival joins an initiative for cooperation called Face to Faith. It includes festivals and theatre houses from several Eastern European countries, including Ukraine.
February 2022: Russia launches full-scale war in Ukraine. Once again, we gather for a video conference call, our voices trembling.
Spring 2023: Face to Faith ends but I keep in touch with Bozhena Pelenska and Liuba Ilnytska, my colleagues from the Ukrainian Jam Factory Art Center. Together, we reflect on alternatives for collaboration between a Ukrainian art centre, Ukrainian artists and a Finnish art festival.
Summer 2023: We receive funding for the Lab for Ukraine project that involves organising two artists’ labs for Ukrainian artists in 2024. Pilots organised during the project enable the participants to develop their artistic practice and create a new language for how to talk about their work during and after the war.
5
Autumn 2023 – spring 2024: Intimate archives containing objects and things that people hold dear are collected for the Wear and Tear installation by Emma Fält, Roberto Fusco and Andrea Mancianti in Helsinki, Hanko and Kuopio. What kind of an intangible legacy is stored in our belongings? Which actions do they echo even after we are gone?
Spring 2024: Hibernation, a piece by the m2f2m collective, is an archive of trans dreams, for which trans people’s experiences are collected from the same three cities.
Summer 2024: We learn that the Kuopio Museum is compiling an archive of LGBTQIA+ history in collaboration with the Pohjois-Savon Seta organisation. I remind the museum of the fact that, at 23 years old, the ANTI Festival is a major part of the LGBTQIA+ history of Kuopio.
Autumn 2024: The Kulkue project is about to end. For three years, we have been involved in an important collaboration with three festivals (ANTI, Baltic Circle and Hangö Teaterträff) and seven artistic working groups. The festivals’ representatives gather to discuss what we should do in a situation where it at times feels like everything is about to end. The Government of Finland is planning to cut the funding for art and culture by EUR 30 million (later they went down to 17,3 million) next year and in total by many times more in the four-year government term. Will this close down festivals, will it put an end to art, will it silence critical voices?
6
But we will start on 10 September. At the ANTI Festival, artists have created spaces that allow participants to dream, discuss, dance ferociously – and take a rest. You may also choose to observe the events from whatever distance feels comfortable to you.
From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank all the artists and working groups participating in the festival. I thank our funders for still making all of this possible. I thank the ANTI team members.
I also thank you, our audience member, in advance. Newcomer, welcome to try this out. Old friend, I hope we can open a new window for you too.
Elisa Itkonen
Lead Curator