Sandra Hall (UK) & Kim Saarinen (FI): Coming Back

Video installation, Coming Back is about people returning to the limits they temporarily transcend when they run a marathon. This work records their first moments after Kuopio runners return from a marathon and slowly return to themselves.The work also explores taboos of gaze and intimacy, confronting the physical reality of the body’s limits and endurance. Though marathons attract hundreds of people, the final moments are a mixture of pain, pleasure, relief and often stunned silence. For the public, watching this final moment is intriguing and hard to watch. For the runners they often avoid all gaze and contact.

Coming Back offers permission for people to see and hear runners returning to themselves.

Concept & Direction: Sandra Hall
Videography: Kim Saarinen
Performing: Local runners

Sandra Hall (UK)

Sandra Hall is a Birmingham (UK) based artist. Hall’s interest as a socially engaged practitioner is in finding the appropriate creative means and artforms to tell the intimate stories people have; telling that story with them, not for them. She collaborates with Lee Griffiths and a wide range of practitioners in the framework of Friction Arts. Their process-orientated methodology is bespoke and responsive to people and their places. At the beginning of each project they are in an equal space of ‘not knowing’ the outcome of the project with their participants.

Kim Saarinen (FI)

Kim Saarinen is a director, videographer and editor based in Tampere, Finland. During his career he has worked on movies and short films, commercials, documents and music videos. Most important aspect of his artistic work is to create compassionate stories and evoke feelings that can many times be contradictory.

Saarinen has recorded ANTI Festivals since 2011. This is the first time he will also be working as one of ANTI Festival’s artists, side by side with Sandra Hall.

Local runners

Sandra Hall invited local (marathon) runners to join the project and filmed them in Kuopio 12-16 August. The participating runners met the artistic team beforehand, and the evening was dedicated to discussion on running – why one runs? Each runner was shot individually, on one’s own terms and on the route chosen by the runner.

The people sharing their life in running:

Suvi von Becker
Aki Ikäheimo
Eerika Jalasaho
Markku Ruotsalainen
Waltteri Turunen