Big statement from a small town
I travelled to ANTI Festival and Kuopio, Finland in 2012 to present my work Teresias. That was followed by the meeting with the Artistic Director Johanna Tuukkanen who saw the work in Ljubljana. It’s always amazing to discover a country through an artistic exchange. Encounters with Finnish and other international artists - all in dialogue - over getting to eat a meal of tiny fish (muikku) in the restaurant Sampo, for example. Beautiful encounters in real time. I love that Kuopio is not a huge city but very intimate. There ANTI can have a very local intimate way of engaging with the community and viewers. That’s very special.
In 2014 I was announced as the first Winner of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art. Artists often work without any kind of acknowledgement or affirmation so it did feel really good to have that. To be seen in a more international light. To have your work evaluated by an international jury. It gives a different kind of exposure and creates a different kind of community and network for an artist. Also having a financial award that allows to contribute to the sustainability of practice is very meaningful.
ANTI Festival really put itself in the map by creating the award. There is no other system to support live artists in this way. It’s really just about creating an opportunity and sustaining artists’ career. That radical act coming from this small town in Finland is a big statement.
My partnership with ANTI continued through the Prize commission in 2015. The process was a key turning point in my practice; I had been thinking a lot about the ways that social and political pressures inform our subjectivities and I wanted the work to engage with a real world politics directly. The Powers That Be (260 kilometers) addressed the crisis of LGBTQI rights in Russia, and the fact that there is basically no civil rights there. Through ANTI, I was put in touch with activists working in resettlement for LGBTIQI refugees coming from Russia. Working with the activist in Finland, facilitated by the Festival Manager Elisa Itkonen, we were able to make those real world connection and dialogue, and not only make a work that was symbolic and metaphoric. My art was able to point towards real world issues.
The Powers That Be allowed me to imagine much larger plans. For example, in my work In Plain Sight (2020) I led a coalition of 80 artists, united to create an artwork dedicated to the abolition of immigrant detention and the United States culture of incarceration.
We are going through a time of incredible tensions and uprisings around racial equity and injustice. We have survived a global pandemic. How brilliant that an arts organization like ANTI has a strategy to keep going. It’s a cultural frontline work. Thank you so much ANTI for being the support that you are to global arts community and for generously offering opportunities to artists in these difficult times.
This text is based on a Zoom interview with Cassils. It was originally published in 2021 in ANTIZINE. Cassils is the chair of the jury for the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art 2023.
Live Art Prize 10 Years Publication – Index:
Jennie Klien: The ANTI Festival International Live Art Prize: A Brief History in 3 Parts
The first 9 years of Live Art Prize in pictures
Anna Teuwen: The radicality of opening up – introducing Jota Mombaça, Joshua Serafin, Autumn Knight and Tiziano Cruz
Kaino Wennerstrand: We have not earned a thing