ANTI Festival nominated for the Theatre of the Year 2019 Award in Finland
Media release 14.2.2019
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival has been nominated for the Finnish Theatre of the Year 2019 award. There are two nominees: in addition to ANTI Festival, Baltic Circle Festival from Helsinki is nominated for the award. The winner is selected by the Finnish member of parliament Outi Alanko-Kahiluoto.
The finalists were chosen by a jury, whose members were dramaturgist Marie Kajava, director-screenwriter Hilkka Liisa Iivanainen and critic and researcher Raija Ojala, who is also the former manager of the last year’s winner Zodiak. – Center for New Dance. The prize is awarded by The Association of Finnish Theatres.
With the nominations, the jury wants to highlight two forerunners of Finnish contemporary theatre and performance, who broaden the concept of theatre with their operational model and existence. They are fascinatingly curated, radical and internationally acclaimed art festivals, whose programme and production senses and quickly reacts to the society.
ANTI Festival’s artistic directors are excited about the nomination
This nomination is an incredibly exciting moment for ANTI Festival, rejoice the artistic directors Johanna Tuukkanen and Gregg Whelan. According to Tuukkanen, ANTI expands the notion of theatre by actively asking what a performance is, who is or can be an artist and how audience can be understood. By escaping the traditional spaces and sometimes also forms of theatre, ANTI creates social, cultural and physical space for contemporary artists to create performative encounters that directly engage diverse audiences in their everyday environments. This ongoing act of producing art works in public spaces breaks down stereotypical devisions of art audiences and to whom art is for, and crashes down the myth of artists working in their ivory towers. Whelan emphasizes the festival’s meaning to the city of Kuopio and the availability of art: “For 17 years we’ve been working with performance-makers across Finland, and the world, to offer to Kuopio something we feel is hugely important – the opportunity for people from all walks of life, from every community and neighborhood of Kuopio, to engage with culture and the arts at their best; questioning, complex, challenging, entertaining, surprising and life-changing, often all at the same time. We’re a festival without walls and our events are free to see, there are no tickets, no best seats and no restrictions and who might suddenly turn a corner in their city and encounter a world-renowned artist at work.” Tuukkanen and Whelan would like to thank the artists who have performed at the festival and emphasize the cultural meaning of performance art: “There lies a huge significance and great potential for performance and performance makers whom ANTI celebrates, supports and continues to explore and explode the urban spaces with in the future. To be nominated the Theatre of the Year 2019 is an exciting recognition not only for ANTI, but the hundreds of amazing artists we have worked with. Our audiences constantly surprise us, and we hope we can continue to surprise them. We’re absolutely thrilled to be nominated as a potential Theatre of the Year.”
Jury’s reasoning
ANTI Festival’s content and artistic direction display a broad knowledge of the arts and also ability to act in city space with an especially contemporary vision. The festival’s courage to act on the fringes of performance, social sciences, futurology and gaming is a product of exceptionally professional artistic and productional directing. ANTI creates opportunities for utopias and impossibilities without elitism. The meanings of gaming, it’s strategies and methods, have this far received little attention. In 2018 ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival proved it’s topicality by working with the themes of games and playing.
Theater of the Year award
Theater of the Year award is a prize awarded by The Association of Finnish Theatres yearly to an outstanding Finnish theater, which is especially commendable in its operation by producing experiences to its audiences, being a pleasing work environment, improving its region’s culture life and carrying out other specifically meaningful tasks in its region. The prize has been awarded since 1996. This is the first time a festival has been nominated.
More information about the Association of Finnish Theatre: http://www.suomenteatterit.fi/eng/
Awarding event Thalia-juhla: https://www.facebook.com/events/363004350920166/
Newsletter 1/2019
ANTI Festival thanks Kone Foundation for supporting our new initiative Shortlist LIVE! event 2019-2022!
Shortlist LIVE! is a completely new and unique entity of events which adds to the visibility of the shortlisted artists of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, cultivates discussion about the live art field and helps to deconstruct the meanings and values live art has for individuals and communities. In 2019-2022 the pieces of shortlisted artists will be performed live during ANTI – contemporary Art Festival, to which ANTI Festival will invite a range of international curators and festival programmers. ANTI will also produce a publication about the work of the shortlisted artist edited by the field’s professionals and researchers.
The event, built around The ANTI Festival International Prize for Live
Art, will gather together the very best of the live art field: The
shortlisted artists who currently represent internationally the most
interesting live art in its various forms. Shortlist LIVE! Will offer
their pieces to the public in the spirit of ANTI Festival – in the
public spaces of Kuopio and without an entrance fee.
ANTI Festival 2019
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival will return to the public spaces of Kuopio with a new programme in 10-15 September 2019.
Newsletter 10/2018
Thank you for ANTI Festival 2018!
Co-creating festival works
Highlights
Future DiverCities Lab #3
ANTI 2018 in images
Changes in ANTI team
Thank you for ANTI Festival 2018!
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival was organised in Kuopio, Finland between 25th and 30th September 2018. The festival brought together artists and audiences from across Finland and over 15 different countries. The audiences experienced multidisciplinary contemporary art, explored public spaces and played together as the festival works commented on the ideas of play, playfulness, games and gaming.
The festival events took place around the city of Kuopio in 15 different locations; on streets, on a boat, in parks, gym, church and squares.
Nearly 10 000 participants attended festival events in Kuopio and 30 000 people followed us on social media.
ANTI Festival 2018 collaborated with local professionals in games and gaming, Games for Health Finland network and International Game Developers Association, Kuopio Hub.
A warm thank you to the festival artists, audiences, staff members, volunteers and partners!
The next ANTI Festival will be organised in September 2019, and the theme of the festival will be released in January.
Co-creating festival works
We invited the residents of Kuopio and other audiences to take part in creating some of the festival works. Mark Harvey and John Court directed workshops where local people took part in creating the Drop Kick sculptures of recycled materials.
Christopher Weymann from Theatre of Research directed Playing Up workshops in a local school prior the public Playing Up events. The workshops were cheered by both the kids and the teachers.
In the Wrestling Club workshops, artists Emil Uuttu, Lotta Suomi, Marlon Moilanen and Konsta Ojala prepared participants’ bodies tothe Wrestling Club performances, as the workshop participants performed with the artists.
Still Life by Signe Becker, Rosalind Goldberg and Ingvild Langgård was performed by a local choir, Vox Polaris and dancer students from Riveria Outokumpu.
Highlights
One of the highlights of the festival was experienced on 28th September when Tania El Khoury’s new work, The Search for Power premiered. The Search for Power is co-commissioned by ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art 2017 and Shubbak Festival (UK), and the performances at ANTI were fully booked.
The 2018 winner of the ANTI Live Art Prize was revealed on 29th September by a short film simultaneously published online and screened during the ANTI Prize Party in Kuopio. The 2018 winner of the Prize is the Finnish artist Sonya Lindfors. ANTI Prize Party featured a hypnotic show by a New York based singer Joseph Keckler.
Future DiverCities Lab #3
ANTI Festival also hosted the third Future DiverCities Lab in Kuopio prior and during the festival. In the Lab, artists from different artistic backgrounds and around the globe worked together in the frame work of the Future DiverCities project, in relation to each other, the local environment and community; sharing practices and engaging members of the community in artistic interventions.
ANTI 2018 in images
Videographer Kim Saarinen and photographers Pekka Mäkinen and Ville Hakulinen documented the festival events throughout the festival week.
More amazing images in the Best of ANTI 2018 album on our Facebook page! See the best video clips on our Vimeo page, for example, Postcard from ANTI 2018: Part 1!
Changes in ANTI team
ANTI Festival Manager Elisa Itkonen will be on maternity leave starting from 11th October 2018. Jyri Väisänen will start as Elisa’s substitute on 2nd January 2019. Jyri’s contacts are jyri@antifestival.com and +358 50 305 2005.
Artistic Director – Senior Manager Johanna Tuukkanen will take care of general administration of the organisation for the rest of the year. Johanna’s contacts are johanna@antifestival.com and +358 50 305 2485.
ANTI will be more silent than usual for the rest of the year. In January, Johanna and Jyri will start working full-time on ANTI Festival 2019 and our other activities!
10 000 people exploring ideas of play and games
Media release 1.10.2018
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival was organised in Kuopio, Finland between 25th and 30th September 2018. The festival brought together artists and audiences from across Finland and over 15 different countries. The audiences experienced multidisciplinary contemporary art, explored public spaces and played together as the festival works commented on the ideas of play, playfulness, games and gaming.
The festival events took place around the city of Kuopio in 15 different locations; on streets, on a boat, in parks, gym, church and squares.
Nearly 10 000 participants attended festival events in Kuopio and 30 000 people followed us on social media.
ANTI Festival 2018 collaborated with local professionals in games and gaming, Games for Health Finland network and International Game Developers Association, Kuopio Hub.
A warm thank you to the festival artists, audiences,
staff members, volunteers and partners!
The next ANTI Festival will be organised in September 2019, and the theme of the festival
will be released in January.
Co-creating festival works
We invited the residents of Kuopio and other audiences to take part in creating some of the festival works. Mark Harvey and John Court directed workshops where local people took part in creating the Drop Kick sculptures of recycled materials.
Christopher Weymann from Theatre of Research directed Playing Up workshops in a local school prior the public Playing Up events. The workshops were cheered by both the kids and the teachers.
In the Wrestling Club workshops, artists Emil Uuttu, Lotta Suomi, Marlon Moilanen and Konsta Ojala prepared participants’ bodies tothe Wrestling Club performances, as the workshop participants performed with the artists.
Still Life by Signe Becker, Rosalind Goldberg and Ingvild Langgård was performed by a local choir, Vox Polaris and dancer students from Riveria Outokumpu.
Highlights
One of the highlights of the festival was experienced on 28th September when Tania El Khoury’s new work, The Search for Power premiered. The Search for Power is co-commissioned by ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art 2017 and Shubbak Festival (UK), and the performances at ANTI were fully booked.
The 2018 winner of the ANTI Live Art Prize was revealed on 29th September by a short film simultaneously published online and screened during the ANTI Prize Party in Kuopio. The 2018 winner of the Prize is the Finnish artist Sonya Lindfors. ANTI Prize Party featured a hypnotic show by a New York based singer Joseph Keckler.
Future DiverCities Lab #3
ANTI Festival also hosted the third Future DiverCities Lab in Kuopio prior and during the festival. In the Lab, artists from different artistic backgrounds and around the globe worked together in the frame work of the Future DiverCities project, in relation to each other, the local environment and community; sharing practices and engaging members of the community in artistic interventions.
ANTI 2018 in images
Videographer Kim Saarinen and photographers Pekka Mäkinen and Ville Hakulinen documented the festival events throughout the festival week.
More amazing images in the Best of ANTI 2018 album on our Facebook page! See the best video clips on our Vimeo page, for example, Postcard from ANTI 2018: Part 1!
Sonya Lindfors is the 2018 Winner of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art
Media release 29.9.2018
Finnish artist Sonya Lindfors was announced as the 2018 winner of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art on Saturday 29th September. Lindfors was revealed as the 5th winner of the prestigious prize by a short film simultaneously published online and screened during the ANTI Prize Party in Kuopio, Finland.
The prize, at €30,000, is one of the richest in the arts, and is awarded annually to an artist or artist collective. ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art is the world’s first prize dedicated to live art.
The 2018 shortlist comprised Lindfors and three internationally celebrated artists from across the globe; All The Queens Men (Australia), Nic Green (United Kingdom) and Jeanne van Heeswijk (Netherlands). Their work shares an urgent fascination with the questions of our time, essaying ideas of inclusion, equality, community, diversity, feminism, power, blackness.
The 2018 jury was chaired by Jacques Rancière (France), one of the most significant and influential philosophers of our time. The jury is completed by renowned performer and choreographer Eisa Jocson (Philippines) and Lois Keidan (United Kingdom), co-founder of the London Live Art Development Agency.
The Jury states of the winner:
“Her practice is of vital importance to its immediate contexts and Lindfors works to allow others to work, to create spaces of exchange and dialogue where previously they were missing. Her contribution to arts and culture is quickly becoming essential, foundational to the sets of social discourses around equality, diversity, gender, and sexuality that are reshaping our world.”
Read the full jury statement on our website.
Sonya Lindfors receives a cash prize of €15,000 and the same amount in the form of a production grant for bringing a new work to the ANTI Festival 2019.
Sonya Lindfors (FI)
Sonya Lindfors is a Helsinki based Finnish artist who works with choreography, facilitating, community organizing and education. She is the founding 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.
In her work, Lindfors deals with issues of power, structures, representation and othering. Her recent series of stage works; NOIR? (2013), NOBLE SAVAGE (2016) and COSMIC LATTE (2018), centralizes questions around blackness, black body politics, race and representation.
Lindfors is interested in creating and facilitating anti-racist and feminist platforms, where a festival, performance, publication or workshop can operate as the site of radical collective dreaming.
More information
on our website and Elisa Itkonen, elisa@antifestival, +358 50 305 2005.
The short film: vimeo.com
Press photos: antifestival.com/media
ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art is organised by ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival and supported by Saastamoinen Foundation.
ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art – Jury Statement 2018
We wish to thank the generosity of the four remarkable shortlisted artists for sharing their work with us. It has been a pleasure and privilege to encounter the work of these artists operating across diverse practices, using very different strategies, but united in their shared commitment to affect and to change; they stand as agents of change – social, political, personal, collective, change. They remind us of the breadth and depth of Live Art as field of activity, their brilliance underling its urgent presence in social and cultural life. We also wish to thank ANTI Festival and the Saastamoinen Foundation for establishing and supporting an award that can celebrate four artists as varied, as exciting, as vital and as needed as this year’s shortlist.
Our task as a jury was incredibly difficult, to find a winning artist amongst this group, one also united by a shared sense of generosity, generosity shown to their audiences, their collaborators, their participants and to the constituencies and communities their work contributes to. All The Queens Men bring people together in ways that are truly impactful and joyous, giving space and time to people, to communities and to histories on a scale, and with ambition, that is nothing short of epic. Their work transcends the initial impulse and presence of the artist and becomes a singular moment in time.
The socially embedded and responsive work of Jeanne van Heeswijk creates dialogue and exchange, opening out city space and urban life by asking a series of fundamental questions on how to live with each other and how the frameworks of policy, governance, capital and community variously inhibit and engender ideas of home. van Heeswijk’s process-based projects brilliantly challenge our thinking around what art is, what it can do and how we identify it.
The jury was deeply impressed by Nic Green’s work and would like to extend special mention of that here. Her capacity for invention, her ability to blur the borders between performance forms, the incredibly vivid presence of the body in her work, often her own body, her extensive skills as a performer and as a maker of performance are clearly displayed across an impressive range of productions for the stage and other contexts. Green’s sense of composition, her choreographic understanding of structure, allied to a set of concerns that are urgently, eloquently and forcibly expressed make for a growing body of performance work that impresses, shocks and inspires.
Sonya Lindfors’ live works, her interventions in social space, literary space and her contribution to public dialogue and exchange have created an urgent set of questions around who speaks and to whom. Lindfors’ choreographic practice produces interrogative space, dialogic space, an embodied black space, that deeply and purposely problematizes expectations. The impulse of her performance work and the bodies found there, hidden, revealed and playfully evoked challenge our sense of ‘the canon’; what other histories and trajectories run through this space and which do not, which haven’t featured – what voices, what bodies, remain missing? Lindfors’ work questions assumption, it questions us in our act of witnessing. In their stillness, their silence her performances watch us – as they move, speak, stand, observe, we engage in something of the same process; we begin to re-apprehend cultural space – who is it for, who works there, who is allowed to work and who attends to its potentials.
Her practice is of vital importance to its immediate contexts and Lindfors works to allow others to work, to create spaces of exchange and dialogue where previously they were missing. Her contribution to arts and culture is quickly becoming essential, foundational to the sets of social discourses around equality, diversity, gender, and sexuality that are reshaping our world. Lindfors works with the body, she works with movement and choreography to articulate and to question the place, the provenance and potentials of the body, her body, to cause change. For this, and for the equally extraordinary work we know will follow, we are thrilled to award the 2018 ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art to Sonya Lindfors.
Jacques Rancière
Eisa Jocson
Lois Keidan
Highlight of the ANTI Festival week is awarding ANTI Live Art Prize
ANTI Prize Party
Saturday 29.9. 21.00-24.00
Restaurant Panza | Ajurinkatu Street 26
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!
Joseph Keckler (US)
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”.Calling on a powerful and versatile voice, Joseph Keckler shares highlights of his work: humorous vignettes, haunting ballads, and wild arias about contemporary life that spiral out towards the mythic.
ANTI Live Art Prize Shortlisted 2018 in Kuopio
Saturday 29.9. 14.00
Gallery Ars Libera | Suokatu Street 30, Kuopio
Welcome to meet the 2018 shortlisted artists for the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art! All The Queens Men (Australia), Nic Green (United Kingdom), Jeanne van Heeswijk (Netherlands) and Sonya Lindfors (Finland) will present their work and discuss with ANTI Festival’s artistic directors Gregg Whelan and Johanna Tuukkanen as well as with the audience!
The event is organised in collaboration with the artist association Ars Libera.
Becker (NO), Goldberg (SE) & Langgård (NO): Still Life
Saturday 29.9. 12.00 & 14.00
Sunday 30.9. 15.00
St John’s Church | Ampujanpolku Street 2
In Still Life, scenography, choreography and sound together create an ever changing tableau. The scenery first seems frozen and arrayed. In the course of time, it will grow and morph into living, three dimensional images with sound – constantly changing shape and meaning. Still Life is as much of a concert as a performance: the scenography and sound will be choreographed, the dancers will turn into scenography and the sound will be dancing.
Richard DeDomenici (UK): The Swivelympics
Saturday 29.9. 10.00 – 15.00
ANTI pop-up play space | Hallikatu 14
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.
New openings and discussion at ANTI Festival
Media release 27.9.2018
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival is running in Kuopio, Finland. We open new works and host discussion meetings today and tomorrow, see below!
Also remember the programme which opened in the beginning of the week and continues till Saturday.
For more information: Elisa Itkonen, +358 50 305 2005, elisa@antifestival.com.
ANTI Live Art Prize Shortlist 2018, Helsinki
Thursday 27.9. 17.00
Publics | Sturenkatu Street 37-41 4B) Helsinki
Welcome to meet with the 2018 shortlisted artists for ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art! 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.
We announce the 2018 winner of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art in an online short film and ANTI Prize Party on Saturday 29th in restaurant Panza, Kuopio!
How do we talk about games?
Thursday 27.9. 18.00
Restaurant Malja | Kauppakatu Street 29
Discussion and network meeting.
The working language of the evening is Finnish.
How do we talk about games (in Finland)? What kind of conceptions do we have of video and mobile game-playing? How is gaming used in our everyday life and, for example, in arts? How could we benefit more from gaming in different social fields? How could we create operational models and communities through gaming?
We have invited specialists on games and gaming from different contexts to discuss these questions. After the panel discussion we will continue with informal networking!
The event is organized in collaboration with IGDA Kuopio, Games for Health Finland and The Finnish Critics’ Association (SARV).
Meetlab (HU): TRON
TRON continues from Petonen to the city centre!
Thursday 27.9. 18.00 – 22.00
Friday 28.9. 18.00 – 24.00
Saturday 29.9. 18.00 – 22.00
Koljonniemenkatu Street 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!
A Kuopio based dj, DJ Tesno adds party vibes to TRON on Friday and Saturday evenings!
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 Kick will 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 | Hallikatu Street 14
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.
Anna Maria Häkkinen, Lotta Suomi, Emil Uuttu (FI): Wrestling Club
Friday 28.9. 19.00 – 21.00
Saturday 29.9. 18.00 – 20.00
Element Studio | Maaherrankatu Street 21
The Wrestling Club is a workshop and performance installation. The artists gather to wrestle with local workshop participants to prepare participants’ bodies for the performance. Audiences are invited to follow the pre-written but unrehearsed performance, featuring a loud bass-driven DJ set, and feeling the bodily experience of wrestlers in their own bodies.
Photo above: Kristian Palmu
Tania El Khoury (LB): The Search for Power
Friday 28.9. 19.00
Saturday 29.9. 19.00
Railway workshop | Pohjolankatu Street 1
Ask for possible open seats: booking@antifestival.com!
Installation performance by Tania El Khoury in collaboration with Ziad Abu-Rish.
On a night with a sudden electricity outage in their Beirut neighbourhood, the artist and her historian husband discussed the history of power cuts in Lebanon…
Tania El Khoury, the 2017 winner of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art returns to Kuopio with her new commissioned work!
ANTI Festival opens today in Kuopio, Finland!
Media release 25.9.2018
17th edition of ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival opens today on Tuesday 25th September in Kuopio, Finland. Internationally celebrated, award-winning artists from around the world will present projects engaged with ideas of play, playfulness, games and gaming.
All festival events are free to attend. Read about the programme of the first festival days below and join in!
For more information, contact Elisa Itkonen, +358 50 305 2005, elisa@antifestival.com.
Festival Opening & ANTI pop-up play space
Tuesday 25.9. 12.00
ANTI pop-up play space | Hallikatu Street 14
The festival opening will be held in ANTI pop-up play space, full of innovative and exciting games and artworks during the festival week. Welcome to meet with the festival team, artists and pick up your copy of the festival programme and ANTIZINE magazine!
Madeleine Flynn & Tim Humphrey (AU): Pivot
Tuesday 25.9. – Friday 28.9. 11:00 – 17:00
Saturday 29.9. 10:00 – 16:00
Park next to the Kuopio City Hall | Tulliportinkatu Street 31
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.
Three Pivot seesaws will be installed in a park next to the Kuopio City Hall!
We have challenged decision makers from the City of Kuopio to discuss with the town residents while having a seesaw ride. On the opening day, Vice Mayor Jari Kyllönen is available to have a ride with you between 11.00 and 12.00!
Sanna From & Riina Hannuksela (FI): I Love Me Lunch Play
Tuesday 25.9. – Friday 28.9. 12:00 – 13:00
Mobile
Have a different lunch break!
The main goal of I Love Me Lunch Play is to get new perspectives on your everyday life. You can play this game in your everyday surroundings, inside or outside, in institutions, work places, schools, malls, parks, yards, streets – where ever!
How to play? Go to our website for the instructions!
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
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.
Hai Art, Antye Greie-Ripatti (DE/FI), Juan Duarte Regino (MX) & Eerika Jalasaho (FI): Sound Map Kuopio
Tuesday 25.9. 16.00 – 18.00
Meet with the Artist Eerika Jalasaho
ANTI pop-up play space | Hallikatu Street 14
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?
Meetlab (HU): TRON
Tuesday 25.9. – Wednesday 26.9. 18:00 – 21:00
Ylä-Pyörö school yard | Blominkatu Street 2 (Petonen district)
Thursday 27.9. 18:00 – 22:00
Friday 28.9. 18:00 – 24:00
Saturday 29.9. 18:00 – 22:00
Koljonniemenkatu Street 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!
Tania El Khoury (LB): As Far As My Fingertips Take Me
Wednesday 26.9. 15.00 – 17.00 & 18.00 – 20.00
Thursday 27.9. 15.00 – 17.00 & 18.00 – 20.00
Friday 28.9. 13.00 – 15.00 & 16.00 – 18.00
M/S Queen R | Kuopio Harbour | Kauppakatu Street 1
One audience member every 10 minutes, book your seat: booking@antifestival.com!
As Far As My Fingertips Take Me is an encounter through a gallery wall between an audience member and a refugee.
Future DiverCities Lab #3 – Public Sharing
Wednesday 26.9. 17.00
Community centre Pinari | Pyörönkaari 19
ANTI Festival will host the third Future DiverCities Lab in Kuopio before and during the festival! In the Lab, artists from different artistic backgrounds and around the globe work together in the frame work of the Future DiverCities project, in relation to each other, the local environment and community, sharing practices and engaging members of the community in artistic interventions.
In the end of the working period, the Lab artists share the outcomes of their collective process in an open event!
Anna Maria Häkkinen, Lotta Suomi & Emil Uuttu (FI): Wrestling Club workshops
The Wrestling Club workshop aims at preparing participants’ bodies for the performances seen in the festival programme. Anyone, regardless of age, size and gender may participate in the workshop!
Schedule
Wed 26.9. 16.30 – 19.30 – workshop
Thu 27.9. 16.30 – 19.30 – workshop
Fri 28.9. 19.00 – 21.00 – performance
Sat 29.9. 18.00 – 20.00 – performance
Locations and more information on our website. You may sing up by sending email to booking@antifestival.com or calling to +358 50 305 2005!
One week to ANTI Festival 2018 – welcome to play with us!
Media release 18.9.2018
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival starts in Kuopio, Finland on Tuesday 25th September. The festival programme is responding to the themes of play, playfulness, games and gaming. Experience live art with all your senses!
All festival events are free to attend but we require seat reservations to some performances. Read more below and book now!
In addition to the artistic programme, welcome to the Festival Opening, Future DiverCities Lab sharing event and ANTI Prize Party where we announce the 2018 winner of ANTI Live Art Prize. ANTI Prize Party features an amazing gig by the New York based signer-songwriter Joseph Keckler, performing in Finland for the first time ever.
Join our 2018 Facebook event to follow the festival news!
For more information, contact Elisa Itkonen, +358 50 305 2005, elisa@antifestival.com.
Festival Opening
Tuesday 25.9. 12.00
ANTI pop-up play space, Hallikatu 14
The festival opening will be held in ANTI pop-up play space, full of innovative and exciting games and artworks during the festival week. Welcome to meet with the festival team, artists and pick up your copy of the festival programme and ANTIZINE magazine!
Future DiverCities Lab – Public sharing
Wednesday 26.9. 17.00
Community centre Pinari, Pyörönkaari 19
ANTI Festival will host the third Future DiverCities Lab in Kuopio before and during the festival! In the Lab, artists from different artistic backgrounds and around the globe work together in the frame work of the Future DiverCities project, in relation to each other, the local environment and community, sharing practices and engaging members of the community in artistic interventions.
The 2018 Lab artists are Sanna From (FI), Riina Hannuksela (FI), Joseph Keckler (US) and Bart Witte (NL).
In the end of the working period, the Lab artists share the outcomes of their collective process in an open event.
ANTI Prize Party
Saturday 29.9. 21.00
Restaurant Panza, Ajurinkatu 26
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. ANTI Prize Party is also the festival club you don’t want to miss!
Featuring a show by the New York based singer and musician Joseph Keckler, hailed by the New York Times as ”major vocal talent whose range shatters the conventional boundaries”. Calling on a powerful and versatile voice, Keckler shares highlights of his work: humorous vignettes, haunting ballads, and wild arias about contemporary life that spiral out towards the mythic.
Book now!
Anna Maria Häkkinen, Lotta Suomi & Emil Uuttu (FI): Wrestling Club workshops
The Wrestling Club workshop aims at preparing participants’ bodies for the performances seen in the festival programme. Anyone, regardless of age, size and gender may participate in the workshop!
Schedule
Wed 26.9. 16.30 – 19.30 – workshop
Thu 27.9. 16.30 – 19.30 – workshop
Fri 28.9. 19.00 – 21.00 – performance
Sat 29.9. 18.00 – 20.00 – performance
Locations and more information on our website. You may sing up by sending email to booking@antifestival.com or calling to +358 50 305 2005!
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Tania El Khoury (LB): As Far As My Fingertips Take Me
One audience member every 10 minute! Free slots to book:
Wednesday 26.9. 15.00 – 17.00 & 18.00 – 20.00
Thursday 27.9. 18.00 – 20.00
M/S Queen R | Kuopio Harbour | Kauppakatu Street 1
An encounter through a gallery wall between an audience member and a refugee.
Tania El Khoury (LB): The Search for Power
Friday 28.9. 19.00
Saturday 29.9. 19.00
Railway workshop | Pohjolankatu Street 1
Tania El Khoury, the 2017 winner of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art returns to Kuopio with a new commissioned work!
Book seats by emailing to booking@antifestival.com ! Please tell your full name, name of the work, date and time.