Announcing the 2018 ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art Shortlist and Jury Chair, Jacques Rancière
Media release 24.5.2018
ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art will be awarded for the 5th time in September 2018 in Kuopio, Finland. The world’s only international award for Live Art is €30,000, making it one of the richest cultural prizes in the arts.
This year, the international prize jury is chaired by one of the most significant and influential philosophers of our time, Jacques Rancière (France). Celebrated for his writing on equality, emancipation, education, aesthetics, art and knowledge, Rancière is a thrilling addition to the 2018 jury, which is completed by Eisa Jocson (Philippines) and Lois Keidan (United Kingdom). Keidan, sitting on the jury for a second year, is co-founder of the London Live Art Development Agency. Renowned Philippines-based artist Eisa Jocson works with choreography investigating the labour, and representations of the dancing body.
Four outstanding contemporary artists/collectives from across the globe are set to compete for the 2018 prize, they are: All The Queens Men (Australia), Nic Green (United Kingdom), Jeanne van Heeswijk (Netherlands) and Sonya Lindfors (Finland). The urgent contributions these celebrated artists make to cultural life share a fascination with the questions of our time, essaying ideas of inclusion, equality, community, diversity, feminism, power and blackness. Read more about the shortlisted artists below!
ANTI Festival’s Artistic Directors Johanna Tuukkanen and Gregg Whelan:
“We’re incredibly excited by the proposition that each of these remarkable artists offer – their agency, their force of will, their vision, their ambition and their brilliance is celebrated here, as is the promise of what’s next, of where their work will take us.”
2018 ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art Short List:
All The Queens Men (AU)
Established by Australian artists Tristan Meecham and Bec Reid, All The Queens Men (ATQM) champion social equality celebrating diverse communities through creative actions, contemporary arts and socially engaged frameworks. Combining contemporary art forms and tropes, All The Queens Men engage people from different backgrounds in the making and performing of their inclusive works, celebrating these ‘everyday experts’ in exciting and technically proficient art contexts. With over 30 years of combined experience, All The Queens Men have presented their work globally across arts festivals and other cultural contexts. Some of their recent creative actions include The Coming Back Out Ball (2017-), Congress (2017) and Fun Run (2015-), and in 2018 they received Victorian Green Room Award for their 2017 Body of Work. READ MORE
Nic Green (UK)
Nic Green is an award-winning performance maker based in Glasgow, Scotland. Her work is varied in style and method, with forms often ‘found’ through collaborative and relational practices with people, place and material. Her work has received several awards, commissions and recognitions including A Herald Angel, ‘Best Production’ at Dublin Fringe, The Adrian Howells Award for Intimate Performance, Total Theatre Award for Best Physical/Visual Theatre Edinburgh Fringe and is the recipient of the inaugural Forced Entertainment Award. Green is the 2018 Artist in Residence at National Theatre Scotland, and teaches Directing at the University of Glasgow. Green’s recent works include Cock and Bull (2015-2017), Seven Bridges (2015) and Trilogy (re-mount 2016). READ MORE
Jeanne van Heeswijk (NL)
Jeanne van Heeswijk is an artist who facilitates the creation of dynamic and diversified public spaces in order to “radicalize the local.” Her long-scale community-embedded projects question art’s autonomy by combining performative actions, discussions, and other forms of organising and pedagogy in order to assist communities to take control of their own futures. Her work has been featured in publications worldwide, as well as internationally renowned biennials including those in Liverpool, Shanghai, and Venice. Her celebrated works include Philadelphia Assembled (2016), Wastelanders (2012) and The Blue House (2005). van Heeswijk received the 2014-2015 Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism at Bard College and the Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change. READ MORE
Sonya Lindfors (FI)
Sonya Lindfors is a Helsinki based Finnish artist who works with choreography, facilitating, community organizing and education. She is the founder member and Artistic Director of UrbanApa, an inter-disciplinary and counter hegemonic arts community that offers a platform for new discourses and feminist art practices. Her recent series of stage works; NOIR? (2013), NOBLE SAVAGE (2016) and COSMIC LATTE (2018), centralizes questions around blackness and the black body. In 2013 UrbanApa received Finland’s State Award in dance art. In 2017, Lindfors received the Artist of the Year award from the Helsinki Municipality alongside Theatre Info Finland’s award for ”outstanding work on creating new discourse around blackness and otherness”. Across 2017-2018, Lindfors is the house choreographer of Zodiak – Center for New Dance in Helsinki. READ MORE
The winning artist receives a cash prize of €15,000 and the same amount in the form of production support to bring a new work to the ANTI Festival 2019. Previous winners: 2014 Cassils (Canada/USA), 2015 Willoh S. Weiland (Australia), 2016 Terike Haapoja (Finland) and 2017 Tania El Khoury (Lebanon).
ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art is generously supported by the Saastamoinen Foundation.
For more information: antifestival.com, Festival Manager Elisa Itkonen, +358 50 305 2005, elisa@antifestival.com
