ANTI Festival 25.-30.9.2018 – Gift for the whole family
Media release 13.9.2018
The 17th edition of ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival will take place between 25th and 30th September 2018. The festival projects are engaged with ideas of play, playfulness, games and gaming. The artistic programme offers experiences to audiences of all ages!
Below our tips for the whole family!
All events are free to attend.
Madeleine Flynn & Tim Humphrey (AU): Pivot
Tuesday 25.9. – Friday 28.9. 11.00 – 17.00
Saturday 29.9. 10.00 – 16.00
Part next to the City Hall | Tulliportinkatu 31
Rejoice in the safe absurdity of a see saw ride, while our democracy teeters towards ever more dangerous farce. As you enjoy the rare opportunity to ride, speak, and listen, remember that Pivot is programmed to consider all words it hears, and is reflecting your own views, and the views of many others.
Pivot’s field of boldly coloured seesaws invites you to stop and play – and then asks you to think deeply about the commitments you make every day to create this complex world of ours!
Photo above: Gregory Lorenzutti
Action Hero (UK): Oh Europa
Tuesday 25.9. 13.00 – 17.00
Wednesday 26.9. – Thursday 27.9. 12.00 – 16.00
Friday 28.9. 18.00 – 22.00
Saturday 29.9. 11.00 – 13.00
Kuopio Market Square
Welcome to share your favourite love songs!
Over 6 months in 2018, Action Hero are travelling over 30,000km across Europe in a motorhome, recording songs of love, hope, heartbreak, loss and desire, sung by the people they meet. They invite ANTI Festival and the people of Kuopio to contribute to the process by recording love songs in their mobile studio and by encountering material gathered on their journey through Europe’s contested identity.
Meetlab (HU): TRON
Tuesday 25.9. – Wednesday 26.9. 18.00 – 21.00
Ylä-Pyörö school yard | Blominkatu 2
Thursday 27.9. 18.00 – 22.00
Friday 28.9. 18.00 – 24.00
Saturday 29.9. 18.00 – 22.00
Koljonniemenkatu 3
We invite people of Kuopio to play TRON, the legendary and simple one-on-one video game, laser projected on a wall of a building! TRON takes us back in time to the creation of our first video games. Let’s play, cheer and challenge the winners all night long!
John Court (FI/UK) & Mark Harvey (NZ): Drop Kick
Friday 28.9. 10.00 – 16.00
Snellmanin puisto Park
Saturday 29.9. 10.00 – 16.00
Kuopio Market Square & streets around
Drop Kickwill involve playful endurance/durational actions performed by John Court and Mark Harvey together with apparatuses that they develop in workshops with local youth through a process of guided collaboration.
Notions of play will be explored through a sense of free-association in the development of these large objects with participants and the way in which Court and Harvey choose to respond to them through their actions.
Theatre of Research (DE): Playing Up
Friday 28.9. – Saturday 29.9. 11.00 – 17.00
ANTI pop-up play space
Make clothes out of food, lie on top of cars, dance with animals, have a ketchup fight, follow a random passerby, invent your own form of sport, search for miracles. Drawing on key Live Art themes and seminal works, PLAYING UP takes the form of a game played by adults and kids together.
Richard DeDomenici (UK): The Swivelympics
Saturday 29.9. 10.00 – 15.00
ANTI pop-up play space
Welcome to The Swivelympics – your chance to achieve international sporting greatness without standing up! The aim of Swivelympics – other than world peace and human understanding – is to complete the most number of spins in one self-propelled push in a standard office swivel chair.
point and place (UK etc): Hexagons
Tuesday 25.9. – Saturday 29.9.
ANTI pop-up play space
Hexagons is a game created by the artist collective point and place, exploring landscape, the body and acts of communication. Drawing on an archive of images created over 10 years of collaborative practice, the game is made of 33 paired images, printed on beautifully crafted hexagonal pieces.
An invitation to play and explore, Hexagonscan be played as the traditional memory game ‘Pelmanism’ or used as a starting point for creative interaction and improvised play.
Games for Health Finland & IGDA Kuopio: Retro Game Corner
Tuesday 25.9. – Saturday 29.9.
ANTI pop-up play space
ANTI Festival’s local partners will set up a spot to play retro video games in good company. Retro Game Corner is a platform for intergenerational sharing and a review of the history of video games!
Detailed festival programme on our website!
Join our 2018 Facebook event!
For more information, contact Elisa Itkonen, elisa@antifestival.com, +358 50 305 2005.
Newsletter 8/2018
ANTI Festival starts in a month
Sign up for “behind the scenes” festival experiences
Book your seats
ANTIZINE vol. 6
ANTI Festival, Kuopio, Finland starts in a month
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival 2018 is getting closer and we enjoy the festival opening after a month, on 25th September. Internationally celebrated, award-winning artists from around the world will present projects engaged with ideas of play, playfulness, games and gaming.
A playful engagement with the spaces of Kuopio, ANTI Festival’s host city, has been at the heart of our approach to bringing vital, exciting and surprising contemporary art to this inquisitive community. For 2018 we’re focusing our attentions properly on play and gaming.
On 29th September, we award ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, one of world’s most exciting cultural prizes. We’ll also host the third Future DiverCities Lab in Kuopio between 21st and 27th September.
Updated festival programme and schedule on our website!
Join our 2018 Facebook event to follow the festival news!
Time to sign up for “behind the scenes” festival experiences:
Volunteer staff
We are looking for volunteers to help us in the production of ANTI Festival. Various tasks are available between 19th September and 1st October and especially during the festival between 25th and 30th September 2018.
We need many helping hands, for example, in assisting and hosting the festival artists, transportation,
roadie and audience work.
If you are planning to visit the festival, join our volunteer staff to network and experience the “behind the scenes”! READ MORE
Wrestling Club
Wrestling Club is a workshop and performance by Anna Maria Häkkinen, Lotta Suomi ja Emil Uuttu, presented at ANTI Festival 2018. The Wrestling Club workshop aims at preparing participants’ bodies for the performance.
The workshop centres around consent, safety, power relations and contact. Anyone, regardless of age, size and gender may participate in the workshop! The workshop will be directed by the Wrestling Club artists and is free to attend.
Wrestling Club
Wed 26th Sep. at 5 – 8 pm.
Thu 27th Sep at 5 – 8 pm.
Fri 28th Sep at 7 – 9 pm.
Sat 29th Sep at 6 – 8 pm.
For more information and sign ups to volunteer staff and Wrestling Club contact Elisa Itkonen: elisa@antifestival.com, +358 50 305 2005!
Book your seats to these performances!
All festival events are free to attend but we require seat reservations to some performances.
Book seats by emailing to: booking@antifestival.com !
Tania El Khoury (LB): As Far As My Fingertips Take Me
Book your individual 10 minute performance!
Wed 26.9. 15.00 – 17.00 &
18.00 – 20.00
Thu 27.9. 15.00 – 17.00 &
18.00 – 20.00
Fri 28.9. 13.00 – 15.00 &
16.00 – 18.00
M/S Queen R | Kuopio Harbour | Kauppakatu Street 1
Tania El Khoury (LB): The Search for Power
Limited number of audience seats, book your seat!
Fri 28.9. 19.00
Sat 29.9. 19.00
Railway workshop | Pohjolankatu Street 1
ANTIZINE vol. 6 / 2018
ANTI Festival releases an annual publication, ANTIZINE – both as a printed and online version. ANTIZINE gives voice to people who have been creating the festival; curators, producers as well as artists, partners and participants are given columns to express their thoughts about the upcoming festival and its themes.
As ANTI 2018 is inspired by ideas of play, playfulness, games and gaming, ANTIZINE vol. 6 / 2018 is responding to the same themes. We wanted to find a way to not only talk about games but talk about games through a game. Yet, ANTI Festival’s programme offers much more diverse perspectives to games, it was both the festival themes and the idea of co-creation that lead us as we decided to use a video game as a tool of text creation. This year, we wanted the zine to BE a discussion.
Visit ANTI Festival 25.-30.9.2018 and Kuopio to pick up the printed version!
ANTI Festival starts in a month – Celebrated live artists come together in Kuopio, Finland
Media release 28.8.2018
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival 2018 is getting closer and we enjoy the festival opening after a month exactly, on 25th September. Internationally celebrated, award-winning artists from around the world will present projects engaged with ideas of play, playfulness, games and gaming.
A playful engagement with the spaces of Kuopio, ANTI Festival’s host city, has been at the heart of our approach to bringing vital, exciting and surprising contemporary art to this inquisitive community. For 2018 we’re focusing our attentions properly on play and gaming.
On 29th September, we will award ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, one of world’s most exciting cultural prizes. We’ll also host the third Future DiverCities Lab in Kuopio between 21st and 27th September.
Updated festival programme and schedule on our website!
Join our 2018 Facebook event to follow the festival news!
The festival is free to attend.
For more information, contact Elisa Itkonen, +358 50 305 2005, elisa@antifestival.com.
Opening day 25th Sep 2018
11.00 – 18.00
ANTI pop-up play space & info
Shopping Centre Aapeli, Kauppakatu Street 28
11.00 – 17.00
Madeleine Flynn & Tim Humphrey (AU): Pivot
Park next to the Kuopio City Hall, Tulliportinkatu Street 31
12.00
Festival Opening
ANTI pop-up play space, Shopping Centre Aapeli, Kauppakatu Street 28
12.00 – 13.00
Sanna From & Riina Hannuksela (FI): I Love Me Lunch Play
Mobile application, participant’s current location
13.00 – 17.00
Action Hero (UK): Oh Europa
Kuopio Market Square
18.00 – 21.00
Meetlab (HU): TRON
Ylä-Pyörö school yard, Blominkatu Street 2
ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art 2018 Programme
Media release 16.8.2018
ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art will be awarded for the 5th time on 29th 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.
In September, ANTI Festival presents a programme of online and live events dedicated to the Prize. Welcome to follow this rather adventurous process of mapping the most interesting live art of our time!
Previous winners are 2014 Cassils (Canada/USA), 2015 Willoh S. Weiland (Australia), 2016 Terike Haapoja (Finland) and 2017 Tania El Khoury (Lebanon).
Follow the Prize online
Interview with Jacques Rancière
This year, the international prize jury is chaired by one of the most significant and influential philosophers of our time, Jacques Rancière (France) – a thrilling addition to the 2018 jury, which is completed by the renowned artist Eisa Jocson (Philippines) and Lois Keidan (United Kingdom), co-founder of the
London Live Art Development Agency.
The jury gathered together in Paris in the end of May to discuss and evaluate the work of the shortlisted artists and make the decision on the 2018 winner. See the video highlights of the jury meeting.
We also present unique video material of Jacques Ranciére interviewed by art historian Riikka Stewen (Finland) in Paris. See the video interview where Rancière shares his visions of live art!
Liveartprize.com and short film
For the first time in the history of the Prize, we will announce the winner in an online event – through a short film! Visit the new platform for the announcement, shortlisted artists and jury: www.liveartprize.com
Shortlist weeks in ANTI’s social media channels
Starting from today, we dedicate ANTI Festival’s social media channels to the shortlisted artists, one week for each.
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.
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to know more about the shortlisted artists and their work!
Live events at ANTI Festival and Helsinki
Tania El Khoury’s series of works
Tania El Khoury, the 2017 winner of the Prize, returns to Kuopio with a new work made for ANTI Festival,
and an international touring hit:
The Search for Power (premiere)
Friday 28th – Saturday 29th September
ANTI Festival, Kuopio, Finland
As Far As My Fingertips Take Me
Wednesday 26th – Friday 28th September
ANTI Festival, Kuopio, Finland
Artist Talk with 2018 Shortlisted, Helsinki
Thursday 27th September at 5 pm.
Publics (Sturenkatu Street 37-41 4B) Helsinki, Finland
Welcome to meet with the 2018 shortlisted artists! All The Queens Men (Australia), Nic Green (United Kingdom), Jeanne van Heeswijk (Netherlands) and Sonya Lindfors (Finland) will present their work and discuss with Publics’ artistic director Paul O’Neill and the audience.
The event is organised in collaboration with Publics.
Artist Talk with 2018 Shortlisted, Kuopio
Saturday 29th September at 2 pm.
Gallery Ars Libera (Suokatu Street 30) Kuopio, Finland
Welcome to meet with the 2018 shortlisted artists at ANTI Festival!
ANTI Prize Party, Kuopio
Saturday 29th September at 9 pm.
ANTI Festival, see details on our website
We announce the 2018 winner of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art in a video event that will be screened in a live event in Kuopio. At the same time, ANTI Prize Party is the festival club you don’t want to miss!
Featuring a show by a New York based singer, musician, writer and artist Joseph Keckler, hailed by the New York Times as ”major vocal talent whose range shatters the conventional boundaries”.
For more information
Elisa Itkonen
elisa@antifestival.com
+358 50 305 2005
ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art is funded by the Finnish Saastamoinen Foundation.
Newsletter 7/2018
Experience and play ANTI!
Welcome to Wrestling Club
Reveal your talent in signing love songs
Join our volunteer staff
Experience and play ANTI!
At ANTI Festival 25.-30.9.2018 you may participate in contemporary arts in exciting and playful ways. Below invitations to Wrestling Club and Oh Europa vocal group.
In addition, we welcome you to, for example, compete in The Swivelympics, play TRON and Playing Up, seesaw and discuss in Pivot and explore the urban space through I Love Me Lunch Play and
Sound Map Kuopio mobile games!
Most of our events are targeted to the whole family and all the works are free to attend.
Welcome to Wrestling Club
Wrestling Club is a workshop and performance by Anna Maria Häkkinen, Lotta Suomi ja Emil Uuttu, presented at ANTI Festival 2018. The Wrestling Club workshop aims at preparing participants’ bodies for the performance. Audiences are invited to follow the pre-written but unrehearsed performance.
The workshop centres around consent, safety, power relations and contact. Anyone, regardless of age, size and gender may participate in the workshop! The workshop will be directed by the Wrestling Club artists
and is free to attend.
Wrestling Club
2018
Wed 26th Sep. at 5 – 8 pm. – workshop
Thu 27th Sep at 5 – 8 pm. – workshop
Fri 28th Sep at 6 – 8 pm. – performance
Sat 29th Sep at 6 – 8 pm. – performance
Subject to changes in the schedules. The location of the workshop and performances will be communicated
closer to the event.
Ask for more information and sign in the workshops to info@antifestival.com or +358 50 305 2005!
Reveal your talent in singing love songs
Over 6 months in 2018, Action Hero are travelling over 30,000km across Europe in a motorhome, recording songs of love, hope, heartbreak, loss and desire, sung by the people they meet. They invite ANTI Festival and the people of Kuopio to contribute to the process by recording love songs in their mobile studio!
Everyone may visit the Oh Europa motorhome at the Kuopio Market Square between 25th and 28th September and share their favorite love songs. In addition, ANTI Festival is looking for local signer-songwriters
to join the project in advance.
Sign in to info@antifestival.com or +358 50 305 2005!
The project has its own mobile application which is available on both Android and IoS. It can be found by searching for “Oh Europa” on the App Store or on Google Play. Follow the journey also on: www.oheuropa.com
Join our volunteer staff
We are looking for volunteers to help us in the production of ANTI Festival. Various tasks are available between 19th September and 1st October and especially during the festival between 25th and 30th September 2018.
We need many helping hands, for example, in assisting and hosting the festival artists, transportation,
roadie and audience work.
If you are planning to visit the festival, join our volunteer staff to network and experience the “behind the scenes”!
Ask for more information and sign in to info@antifestival.com, +358 50 305 2005!
Newsletter 6/2018
ANTI Festival programme 2018
ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art – new website!
Summer break
ANTI Festival programme 2018
The festival programme was completed in June and we are excited to present the following artists and works:
Madeleine Flynn & Tim Humphrey (AU): Pivot
Action Hero (UK): Oh Europa
Tania El Khoury (LB): The Search for Power &
As Far As My Fingertips Take Me
Signe Becker (NO), Rosalind Goldberg (SE) & Ingvild Langgård (NO): Still Life
Anna Maria Häkkinen, Lotta Suomi & Emil Uuttu (FI):
Wrestling Club
Meetlab (HU): TRON
Theatre of Research (DE): Playing Up
Richard DeDominici (UK): The Swivelympics
Hai Art, Antye Greie-Ripatti (FI/DE), Juan Duarte Regino (MX) & Eerika Jalasaho (FI): Sound Map Kuopio
point & place (UK etc): Hexagons
Games for Health Finland & IGDA Kuopio: Retro Game Corner
ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art
Future DiverCities Lab #3
Read more about all the works on our website!
The 17th edition of ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival will take place between 25th and 30th September 2018. The festival focuses on the themes of play, playfulness, games and gaming. Full programme details published in August.
ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art – new website!
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.
For the first time in the history of the Prize, we will announce the winner in an online event! Visit the new platform for the announcement, shortlisted artists and jury:
www.liveartprize.com
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 the renowned Philippines-based artist Eisa Jocson (Philippines) and Lois Keidan (United Kingdom), co-founder of the London Live Art Development Agency.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.
Summer break
The ANTI Festival team will be having summer holidays in June and July. Between 25th June and 22nd July, we are all on holiday. We will stay silent for a while but will be back and loud soon again.
Enjoy the summer!
New additions to ANTI Festival 2018 programme!
Media release 26.6.2018
The 17th edition of ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival will take place between 25th and 30th September 2018. The festival focuses on the themes of play, playfulness, games and gaming.
We are excited to announce the below additions to our festival programme:
Anna Maria Häkkinen, Lotta Suomi & Emil Uuttu (FI): Wrestling Club
Wrestling is not bound to numbers or embodiments of age, size or gender! The Wrestling Club is a workshop and a performance. The artists gather to wrestle together with local workshop participants, to prepare participants’ bodies for the performance. Audiences are invited to follow the pre-written but unrehearsed performance, featured by a loud bass-driven DJ set, and feel the bodily experience of the wrestlers in their own bodies. Image above by Kristian Palmu.
Meetlab (HU): TRON
We invite people of Kuopio to play TRON, the legendary and simple one-on-one video game, laser projected on a wall of a building. Developed by the Hungarian collective Meetlab, TRON is a mobile, pop-up device capable of transforming large-scale urban surfaces into a playful game display. TRON takes us back in time to the creation of our first video games. Let’s play, cheer and challenge the winners all night long!
Theatre of Research (DE): Playing Up
Make clothes out of food, lie on top of cars, dance with animals, have a ketchup fight, follow a random passerby, invent your own form of sport, search for miracles. Drawing on key Live Art themes and seminal works, PLAYING UP takes the form of a game played by adults and kids together. Devised by Sibylle Peters and published and produced by Theatre of Research (Germany), Live Art Development Agency (UK) and Tate Early Years and Family Programme (UK). Facilitated in Kuopio by Christopher Weymann.
ANTI pop-up play space
ANTI pop-up play space is a playing space and festival hub open throughout the festival between 25thand 30thSeptember. We have invited a number of artists to present and facilitate their innovative and exciting games in the space. The pop-up play space programme includes:
Richard DeDomenici (UK): The Swivelympics
The Swivelympics is your chance to achieve international sporting greatness without standing up! The aim of Swivelympics – other than world peace and human understanding – is to complete the most number of spins in one self-propelled push in a standard office swivel chair. The current world record is 48.5 spins. If you manage to beat that score, you’ll win a genuine gold medal, made entirely out of plastic!
Hai Art, Antye Greie-Ripatti (DE/FI), Juan Duarte Regino (MX) & Eerika Jalasaho (FI): Sound Map Kuopio
A new field-recording sound app for smart devices for the city Kuopio will be launched at this year’s ANTI Festival. Sound Map Kuopio captures sounds of Kuopio in an imaginative, participatory way and ask questions such as which sound do you connect with the city of Kuopio? Which sound belongs to Kuopio, whether you love it or not?
point and place (UK etc): Hexagons
Hexagons is a game created by the artist collective point and place, exploring landscape, the body and acts of communication. Drawing on an archive of images created over 10 years of collaborative practice, the game is made of 33 paired images, printed on beautifully crafted hexagonal pieces. An invitation to play and explore, Hexagons can be played as the traditional memory game ‘Pelmanism’ or used as a starting point for creative interaction and improvised play.
Games for Health Finland & IGDA Kuopio: Retro Game Corner
ANTI Festival’s local partners will set up a spot to play retro video games in good company. Retro Game Corner is a platform for intergenerational sharing and a review of the history of video games!
See also our April programme release with
Madeleine Flynn & Tim Humphrey (AU): Pivot
Action Hero (UK): Oh Europa
Tania El Khoury (LB): The Search for Power &
As Far As My Fingertips Take Me
Signe Becker (NO), Rosalind Goldberg (SE) & Ingvild Langgård (NO): Still Life
Full festival programme published in August. The festival is free to attend.
For more information, go to our website or contact Elisa Itkonen, elisa@antifestival.com, +358 50 350 2005.
Join our 2018 -Facebook event!
ANTI Festival and Amnesty Kuopio invite to dance for the rights of refugees
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival and Amnesty International Kuopion organise a communal dance event ”Take me as I am” at Kuopio Market Square on Monday 18th June starting at 12 pm. till 1 pm. The positive flash mob aims at provoking discussion on a serious matter; the rights of refugees and asylum seekers
both in Finland and globally.
We also aim at bringing together people coming from various backgrounds and creating dialogue
between them through arts.
Welcome to rehearse together!
Take me as I am dance will be rehearsed in open workshops, free to attend.
We are looking forward to a multicultural participant group!
The workshops will be arranged
on Tuesday 12th June and on Thursday 14th June at 4 pm. (till 6 pm.)
at Multicultural Centre Kompassi (Hapelähteenkatu 33, 70110 Kuopio, 2ndfloor) and
on Monday 18th June at 10 am. (till 11 am.) Hapelähteen puisto Park (Snellmaninkatu 41).
Choreography and direction by dance artist Terhi Hartikainen. No previous experience in dancing is required!
You may ask for more information from and sing in to Elisa Itkonen: +358 50 305 2005, elisa@antifestival.com!
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
Newsletter 4/2018
ANTI Festival 2018
Festival artists visiting Kuopio in May
Follow Action Hero’s journey towards Kuopio!
Greetings from the April audience workshop
ANTI Festival 2018
In April, we published the five lead works of our international festival programme. Did you already read about them?
Festival artists visiting Kuopio in May
Tania El Khoury & Ziad Abu-Rish
Tania El Khoury, the 2017 winner of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, returns to Kuopio with a new work, The Search for Power, and an international touring hit, As Far As My Fingertips Take Me.
The Search for Power will be made for Kuopio, and El Khoury together with her working partner Ziad Abu-Rish will spend a short residency in Kuopio between 22nd and 25th May.
Rosalind Goldberg & Ingvild Langgård
Still Life is a Nordic collaboration project between ANTI Festival, Norwegian set designer Signe Becker, Swedish choreographer Rosalind Goldberg and Norwegian musician Ingvild Langgård. The work will premiere at ANTI Festival in September.
Rosalind Goldberg and Ingvild Langgård will arrive to Kuopio to prepare the site-specific work and rehearse with local dancers – dance students of Riveria Outokumpu – between 29th May and 6th June.
Follow Action Hero’s journey towards Kuopio!
Over 6 months in 2018, the internationally celebrated duo Action Hero are travelling over 30,000km across Europe in a motorhome, recording love songs sung by the people they meet.
They invite ANTI Festival and the people of Kuopio to contribute to the process by recording love songs in their mobile studio and by encountering material gathered on their journey through Europe’s contested identity.
This ever-evolving library of songs will be broadcast 24/7 from beacons placed across the continent by the intrepid duo. Listen and follow the journey on www.oheuropa.com!
Greetings from the April audience workshops
Divercities Kuopio workshop
On 26th April, in the Divercities Kuopio workshop, a group of creative residents of Kuopio took part in planning the internationally delivered Divercities mobile application and creating a section for Kuopio full of inspiration and new, contemporary views to our city.
We gathered together ideas from thematic walking routes to interesting local phenomena and urban acts!
Audience panel
On 25th April, we invited our audiences to express their opinions on our plans around the coming festival programme.
Artistic directors Johanna Tuukkanen and Gregg Whelan have prepared a programme draft, and the audience panel was the first one to hear about it.
The members of the panel shared their experiences as young people, as someone new to ANTI Festival – several precious views that we will definitely take into consideration.
Thank you to all the participants in the audience panel as well as in the Divercities Kuopio workshop!