KUOPIO.- This September the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art will be awarded for the 10th time, both celebrating and supporting extraordinary artists. The winning artist will receive a cash prize of 15,000 euros plus the same amount again in the form of a production grant for presenting a commissioned new work at the following year’s ANTI Festival.

The nominees for the 2023 ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art are: Tiziano Cruz (Argentina), Autumn Knight (United States), Jota Mombaça (Brazil) and Joshua Serafin (Philippines/Belgium). In honour of the 10th anniversary of the Prize, the first artist to win the award, Cassils (Canada/United States), has been invited to chair the jury. The Prize is supported by the Saastamoinen Foundation.

Pelin Başaran, John Tain and Elisa Itkonen of the shortlisting committee commented: “While each comes from a unique artistic and geographical background, these artists are all exceptional change-makers in Live Art. They invite us to engage socio-political and ecological realities outside of Eurocentric systems and show us what it means to dream and practice alternative futures”.

The ANTI Festival programme presents live art works by topical international and Finnish artists in locations throughout the city. For this 2023 event, Elisa Itkonen - Lead Curator of the Festival - conceived of ANTI as a mirror to the physical and social changes taking place within the city and the people living in it, whilst the city simultaneously serves as a stage for the presented works.

Elisa Itkonen, Lead Curator, ANTI Festival: “This year, I’ve been thinking about ANTI as a kind of urban activist that also brings attention to global questions and phenomena as well as perspectives that have perhaps not yet been given enough attention in Kuopio. We’re reflecting on topics such as for whom and on whose terms our cities and towns are built; who gets to decide on the development of our environment and our future.”

Highlights from the programme will include:

• Latai Taumoepeau (TO/AU), the winner of the 2022 ANTI Festival Prize for Live Art, will present With this body I remember, with this body I re-wild, a work that illuminates the climate work and communities most affected by climate change in the northern and southern hemisphere.

• Plan 884, by Sebastian López-Lehto, Maarit Utriainen and Riikka Vuorenmaa (FI), a participatory performance that involves walking through and spending time in the perpetually changing city. The work examines the power of urban planning, particularly focusing on the possible futures of a locomotive depot area.

• I was living in a strange place is a work by Henriikka Himma (FI), a study on the history, time and architecture of - and the home created by - shared and private spaces.

• The Book of Kuopio by Andy Field and Beckie Darlington (UK), a guide to Kuopio created in collaboration with the artists and school children from the city. The Book of Kuopio allows children aged 8–12 to define what their city is all about, weaving facts with imaginative stories and dreams, culminating in a live book launch open to all.

• Yellowcake, by Tea Andreoletti (IT), a participatory performance that explores the possibilities of collaboration and togetherness through the story of the anti-uranium mining movement of the late 1970s in Italy. The work combines questions related to environmental protection from the past and the present. Local activists from Extinction Rebellion will be involved in planning and implementing the work.

• Mirella Pendolin, Pia Sirén and Ilona Valkonen (FI) also return to Kuopio with their Plant Based Stories II to continue the stories collected at the last year’s festival depicting individual’s relationship with nature. The installation that engages multiple senses also provides a place for rest in the midst of an intense festival week.

• Binary the Trilogy: TESTO TEMPLE, a new performance by Anna Cadia, Minttu Vesala and the Reality Research Center. The work asks how to stage something as fragile as gender and sexuality, as well as what kind of a stage is needed. It explores the relation of sex hormones, particularly of testosterone, to non-binary gender identity.

• SLIT, a duet by Teo Ala-Ruona and Artor Jesus Inkerö, known for their artistic research on queer identity and body. In SLIT, the artists expand the traditional human condition by producing sounds and a language of uncodedness, of vulnerability, and of strangeness.

All events are free of charge.