Curatorial Statement 2017
It’s difficult to walk for ten minutes in Finland, in any direction, and not encounter a lake. Of course that’s an exaggeration and it’s entirely possible to avoid a shoreline, but the country’s romanticized topography as a land of lakes and islands isn’t entirely fictional either; a flight into any Finnish airport reveals just that, as water gives way to land, in a series of such complex and detailed archipelagos it’s hard to distinguish between the two. Natural water is dynamic in Finland, a dramatic temperature range sees to that, and it shifts in equally dramatic fashion – liquid to (very) solid to liquid – in the course of a year, creating, in winter, a temporary increased surface area to the country strong enough to park cars and light fires upon.
It’s that ability to change state, and to change our perception of the world that began to fascinate us as we built a programme of projects for the 2017 ANTI Festival around water. This year we’ve partnered with Our Water-Conscious Land, a project that proposes Finland, in its centenary year, should work as a global advocate for clean water and its preservation and conservation.
So, we thought about water and leisure, travel and exploration, about trade, industry and market forces, fresh water, salt water, grey water and its purification and treatment on domestic and industrial scales. We thought about the majority of the Earth’s surface also being the most abundant substance in the human body. And we thought about boarders, nationality, immigration, migration and displacement; daily events in the world’s oceans ask this of all us with an urgency not experienced for many years.
Across the spring we’ve been working with the University of Eastern Finland on their New Start Finland! research project where ANTI Festival is contributing with a community project led by artist Ernest Truely. In this project we’re working with young people who have recently been granted asylum in Finland, along with young Finns, on playfully creative responses to migration and nationhood.
The political and the poetic became the phrase that we returned to, offering a framework we invited artists around the world to respond to. This year we returned to the process of holding an open-call for proposals with new energy; anyone, regardless of experience or reputation, can apply to present work in the festival; we received 350 proposals from some 50 different countries and we programmed the majority of the festival from this remarkable pool of responses.
We have other work happening in and around the festival; we’ll be hosting our second Future DiverCities Lab in the week preceding the festival – here four international artists will be exploring how digital technologies can augment socially engaged arts practices; and Terike Haapoja, the 2016 winner of the ANTI Festival international Prize for Live Art will present her new work commissioned by the award, and of course we’ll hold the ceremony to announce the 2017 recipient of what has quickly become one of the world’s most
exciting cultural prizes.
It’s with real excitement we invite you to discover ANTI Festival 2017 with us, as projects appear around the city in response to the place of water in our lives. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain.
Johanna Tuukkanen & Gregg Whelan
Newsletter 5/2017
Festival programme 2017 coming up!
Think about the majority of the Earth’s surface – water –
also being the most abundant substance in the human body. #antifestival2017
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival 2017 will produce a programme of projects that respond to the theme of water. The first programme release coming up on Monday 5th June!
Save the dates 19.-24.9.2017 and follow us also on Facebook, Instagram ja Twitter!
New Start Finland! workshops start
May through October 2017
VAMOS! Kuopio | Sepänkatu 9
A pilot project by artist Ernest Truely, ANTI Festival and the New Start Finland! research project will start in May in Kuopio. The project includes a series of workshops for a group of young people, both who have recently been granted with asylum in Finland and Finnish. The outcomes of the project will be presented in the programme of ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival between 18th and 24th September 2017.
If you are local, a newcomer or an immigrant
between the ages of 18-29, join free for workshops!
Learn techniques for image and video production and editing.
Discover new possibilities for creating content with your mobile device.
Explore ways of using social media to be creative and to learn.
The workshops, May through October 2017, at VAMOS! Kuopio (Sepänkatu 9).
First meetings
Tuesday 16.5. at 17.00 – 18.30
Wednesday 24.5. at 15.00 – 16.30
Wednesday 7.6. at 15.00 – 16.30
Wednesday 14.6. at 15.00 – 16.30
For more information, contact Producer Jyri Väisänen, jyri@antifestival.com!
ANTI Festival awarded EFFE Festivals Label and new Creative Europe project EX(S)PORTS
Media release 4.5.2017
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival has been selected to receive the EFFE Label (Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe). ANTI is now a part of the EFFE festival community, facilitated by the European Festivals Association, which consists of festivals that stand for artistic quality and have a significant impact on local, national and international contexts.
ANTI Festival received the following feedback from the international EFFE jury:
”An artistically ambitious, experimental festival of contemporary, site-specific art. The festival has a strong motive to strengthen its international significance.”
You can access ANTI Festival among other EFFE Label festivals on this website!
EX(S)PORTS #2 building bridges between art and sport
ANTI Festival is happy to announce that EX(S)PORTS #2 project has received support from the European Commission’s Creative Europe Programme. ANTI is a key partner in the two-year international collaboration, which concentrates on building bridges between art and sport, something ANTI has a long-standing interest in – the festival’s 2015 edition was presented in collaboration with Kuopio marathon.
By combining art and sport, the project aims to develop new perspectives and possibilities for artistic projects and to develop and extend audiences for the work and the network’s partner organisations. Project partners will co-produce multidisciplinary art projects, arrange artist residencies and engage different communities and sports organisations in the partner’s host cities.
EX[S]PORTS #2 partners
L’Entorse, project lead (Lille, France)
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival (Kuopio, Finland)
Buda Kunstencentrum (Kortrijk, Belgium)
Leeds Beckett University
with Compass Live Art & Live Art Bistro (Leeds, United Kingdom)
The project will take place between 1st October 2017 and 30th September 2019, with a total budget of € 350 000, of which the European Commission provides funds for nearly 58 % (200 000 €) of.
For more information, contact Elisa Itkonen, elisa@antifestival.com, +358 50 305 2005
Newsletter 4/2017
Building a future city where all voices are heard
“Our simultaneous objectives – developing artists, art and the city – come together excellently in the Future DiverCities – Creativity in an Urban Context project that started in 2016. At the core of the project is urban city space, its cultural diversity and all the voices in the city.”
Johanna Tuukkanen, the Artistic Director of ANTI Festival welcomes all of you to join us on our four-year expedition of Future DiverCities in the new article on our website!
Future DiverCities celebrating its first year
Are you a Future DiverCitizen?
The end of the first Future DiverCities programme theme, Future DiverCitizens is near – and you are invited to join the celebrations!
On Wednesday 17th May, Future DiverCities is on Twitter with #FDCitiesChat to discuss everything that a ‘DiverCitizen’ is and can be around the world in Europe, the UK, the US, Canada and beyond.
Discuss being a citizen of the world in 2017 and all that entails, from geographical location to country of origin, nationality to diverse nations and how culture, art and politics can bring this all together.
More information on Facebook!
Workshops on digital imagining
A pilot project by artist Ernest Truely, ANTI Festival and the New Start Finland! research project will start in May in Kuopio. The project includes a series of workshops for a group of youngsters, both men who have recently been granted with asylum in Finland and Finnish men. The outcomes of the project will be presented in the programme of ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival between 18th and 24th September 2017.
If you are a guy who is local, a newcomer or an immigrant
between the ages of 18-29, join free for workshops!
Learn techniques for image and video production and editing.
Discover new possibilities for creating content with your mobile device.
Explore ways of using social media to be creative and to learn.
The workshops, May through October 2017, at VAMOS! Kuopio (Sepänkatu 9).
For more information, contact Producer Jyri Väisänen, jyri@antifestival.com!
Building a future city where all voices are heard
ANTI has always been an event strongly connected with the City of Kuopio. Places, people, communities and companies of the city are part of the network of contributors where the ANTI Festival was born and takes place. We want to participate in creating and developing a vibrant Kuopio and its urban culture where all voices are heard. Lately, it has been a joy to see how well Kuopio has succeeded in the rankings of Finland’s best places to live.
Alongside promoting urban culture and cultural participation, we have our strong will to always act at the forefront of the most contemporary art. We want to support artists and their work, enable works of art and projects, increase their visibility in different media and bring them close to audiences – whether they are local, global or virtual. By taking chances and trusting the artists, we also enable experimental projects that drive art forward.
These simultaneous objectives – developing artists, art and the city – come together excellently in the Future DiverCities – Creativity in an Urban Context project that started in 2016. At the core of the project is urban city space, its cultural diversity and all the voices in the city. Through residences and projects, we want to bring art close to the people of Kuopio and invite them to join together in making the city an even more vibrant European city where all voices are heard.
The project is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, and we can be proud that, with a few other Finnish projects, the ANTI Festival was once again successful despite the tight international competition between large projects. Partners of the Future DiverCities project include pioneers in electronic art, such as BEK from Bergen, Public Art Lab from Berlin and Second Nature from Aix-en-Provence. With the help of their curatorial expertise, we will work even more with artists specialising in digital art, all the way from media art to electronic music.
Future DiverCities reaches towards the new also when it comes to discussing the future of artistic work and the livelihood gained from it. We believe the future is digital and that new audiences will be reached through the digital world and ecosystems that are only forming at the moment. During the project, one of our main challenges is to discuss how ephemeral art can be realized digitally and what kinds of digital dimensions it could have in the future that would increase its accessibility, expand audiences and also bring income to the artists.
These are big questions, but without large-scale challenges and brave openings, it’s not likely we will find innovative solutions. We believe that together with our project partners, who are all pioneers in their own fields, and artists, different audiences and heterogeneous audiences and participants we will find, if not solutions, then certainly openings that we cannot even begin to image now, at the start of the project.
Isn’t that a comforting perspective of the future?
Together and in co-operation, we are creating a future that is not only a dangerous image of where Europe is headed, but something so much better: something equal, multicultural and simultaneously democratic where all voices will be heard. Something we cannot even begin to imagine, but something we know is more than a utopia.
Join us on our four-year expedition!
The themes of the Future DiverCities project will be discussed soon again in Kuopio. ANTI, the Future DiverCities project and Design Week Kuopio will organise an open discussion meeting on 27th April. Welcome!
In Kuopio, April 13th
Johanna Tuukkanen
Kuopio maps Future discussions on urban environment and co-design
Media release 4.4.2017
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival, Future DiverCities project and Design Week Kuopio will host a discussion meeting on urban culture and environment and co-design in April, in Kuopio.
The organisers welcome local creatives, entrepreneurs, city officers, politicians and citizens of Kuopio to discuss on creative and participatory development and how to create a more vital, communal, open and diverse city.
What is the Kuopio of your dreams?
The meeting will take place on Thursday 27th April 2017 at 7pm. and discussion will be in Finnish. Free entrance.
Photo: Pekka Mäkinen. Future DiverCities Artist Lab in Kuopio in October 2016
Future DiverCities – Creativity in an Urban Context
is an initiative of 10 cultural partners in Europe and Canada funded by Creative Europe (European Union programme for the cultural and creative sectors).
Future DiverCities will aim at exploring new models of creation and dissemination that support, for the future, cultural diversity and alternative ecosystems. The project will centre around the artistic domains of music, digital art and urban art, and it deeply believes in and aims to reinforce social bonds through the arts.
In Kuopio, the project is run by ANTI Festival.
Newsletter 3/2017
Saastamoinen Foundation continues funding the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art
The Finnish Saastamoinen Foundation has granted ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival with €300 000 to award the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art during the next four years (2017-2020). The future of the Prize is secured with this generous support.
ANTI Festival and Saastamoinen Foundation have awarded the world’s only live art prize since the year 2014. The €30 000 Prize is one of the richest in the arts. The support of the Foundation also enables ANTI Festival to develop the process of the Prize and promote the art and artists.
ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art will be awarded again during the ANTI Festival in September 2017. The last year’s winner, Terike Haapoja (in the picture) will bring a new commissioned work to the festival.
For more information, go to the website of ANTI Festival or Saastamoinen Foundation!
Kuopio maps Future discussions
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival, Future DiverCities and Design Week Kuopio will host a discussion meeting on urban culture and environment and co-design in April, in Kuopio.
The organisers welcome local creatives, entrepreneurs, city officers, politicians and citizens of Kuopio to discuss on creative and participatory development and how to create a more vital, communal, open and diverse city. What is the Kuopio of your dreams?
The meeting will take place on Thursday 27th April 2017 at 7pm. and discussion will be in Finnish. Free entrance. For more information, elisa@antifestival.com and the Facebook event (in Finnish)!
Alien Encounters in Kuopio
Alien Encounters, a pilot project by artist Ernest Truely, ANTI Festival and the New Start Finland! research project will start in May in Kuopio. Alien Encounters is a community arts project, a series of workshops for a group of youngsters, both men who have recently been granted with asylum in Finland and Finnish men. The outcomes of the project will be presented in the programme of ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival
between 18th and 24th September 2017.
If you are a guy who is local, a newcomer or an immigrant
between the ages of 18-29, join free for workshops!
Learn techniques for image and video production and editing.
Discover new possibilities for creating content with your mobile device.
Explore ways of using social media to be creative and to learn.
The workshops, May through October 2017, at VAMOS! Kuopio (Sepänkatu 9).
For more information, contact Producer Jyri Väisänen, jyri@antifestival.com!
Saastamoinen Foundation continues funding the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art
Media release 30.3.2017
The Finnish Saastamoinen Foundation has granted ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival with €300 000 to award the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art during the next four years (2017-2020). The future of the Prize is secured with this generous support.
ANTI Festival and Saastamoinen Foundation have awarded the world’s only live art prize since the year 2014. The €30 000 Prize is one of the richest in the arts. The support of the Foundation enables ANTI Festival to develop the process and visibility of the Prize as well as the art form.
ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art will be awarded again during the ANTI Festival in September 2017. The last years’ winner, Terike Haapoja (in the picture) will bring a new commissioned work to the festival.
For more information, go to the website of ANTI Festival or Saastamoinen Foundation or contact Festival Manager Elisa Itkonen: elisa@antifestival.com.
Newsletter 2/2017
Newsletter 3.3.2017
Finnish Cultural Foundation supports ANTI Festival
in Future DiverCities project
The Finnish Cultural Foundation has awarded €85 000 to ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival for implementation of the Future DiverCities – Creativity in an Urban Context project in Kuopio, Finland. Thank you for the investment in international mobility of art and artists!
Future DiverCities is a four-year project between June 2016 and May 2020. It is an initiative of 10 cultural partners in Europe and Canada and a part of the Creative Europe programme of European Commission. The Commission funds 50% of the total budget, and each project partner is responsible of the other half. ANTI Festival has a project budget of €520 000 for the four years. The support of the Finnish Cultural Foundation will be used to cover the €260 000 self-finance share.
The project is counting on a strong international partnership and aims at increasing artists’ mobility to internationalise their careers, supporting artists’ work in the digital era and developement of diverse and multicultural cities. In Kuopio, ANTI Festival wants to create a deeper connection between the local audience and artists but also new, virtual and live audiences and communities across the world.
For more information, contact Elisa Itkonen: elisa@antifestival.com
or go to our website!
Ernest Truely met with asylum seekers in Kuopio
The Helsinki based, American artist Ernest Truely visited Kuopio for the first time between 21st and 23rd February 2017. Truely has been chosen to direct ANTI Festival’s community arts project for asylum seekers in the year 2017.
In Kuopio, Truely will direct workshops for a group of young people, both those who have recently been granted with asylum in Finland and Finns. The workshops will be arranged throughout the year 2017, and the artistic content will be presented in the programme of ANTI – Contemporary Festival in September 2017.
More information on the project on our website!