ANTI Festival’s comment 31.10.2020

It was a great joy for ANTI Festival when Sonya Lindfors was awarded the 2018 ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art. We were very disappointed and saddened when contract negotiations with Lindfors ended with the dissolution of our collaboration in June 2020.

Unfortunately, a related article published in the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper on 31 October 2020 and statements made by Lindfors on social media contain some incorrect information, which we would like to correct here:

There is no currently valid agreement subject to an ongoing contractual dispute between ANTI Festival and Sonya Lindfors as implied by the article published in the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper.

ANTI Festival has paid Sonya Lindfors all compensation and fulfilled all its contractual obligations under the agreement made in 2018. We have supported Lindfors’ work with EUR 30,000 in accordance with the agreement.

ANTI paid the cash prize of EUR 15,000 to Sonya Lindfors’ account on 13 December 2018. During 2019, ANTI paid around EUR 8,000 in expenses related to Lindfors’ project in accordance with a budget prepared and agreed on together with Lindfors. On 30 June 2020, the festival also paid an invoice of EUR 7,500, the remaining sum of the prize allocated to production costs, for Urbaanin taidetanssin tuki ry, an association represented by Lindfors.

We communicated on 15 June 2020 by email that we no longer have grounds for continuing our collaboration as our views are too far apart.