SHORTLIST 2017

ACTION HERO (UK)

Action Hero is an interdisciplinary performance collective by Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse, based in Bristol, UK. For the past decade, they have worked almost exclusively with each other and have toured together to more than twenty countries across 5 continents to critical and popular acclaim.

Their ongoing interests lie in the iconography of popular culture and its use; both as a weapon and as a shared cultural memory, and although their work manifests in many different forms, the live experience is at the heart of everything they do. READ MORE

TERIKE HAAPOJA (FI)

Terike Haapoja is a Finnish visual artist based New York. Haapoja’s political interventions, large scale installation work and writing investigate the mechanics of othering with a specific focus on issues arising from the anthropocentric world view of western modernism.

Haapoja’s utopian societal institutions, such asParty of Others (2011–) or the collaboration with writer Laura Gustafsson, History of Others (2012 – ongoing) activate the world around them, bringing structures of exclusion and inclusion into light. In recent projects Haapoja has approached law as a performative space where reality is constructed. READ MORE

MY BARBARIAN (US)

My Barbarian is an art collective made up of Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade. Their work uses performance to play with social difficulties, theatricalize historic problems, and imagine ways of being together. They make plays, masks, videos, drawings, music, installations, texts, events, puppets, and paintings.

The collective have presented work around the world, in many museums, festivals, galleries and public spaces. My Barbarian originated in Los Angeles in 2000 and today its members are based in LA and New York. READ MORE

PUBLIC MOVEMENT (IL)

Public Movement is a performative research body which investigates and stages political actions in public spaces. It studies and creates public choreographies, forms of social order, overt and covert rituals.

Public Movement is currently activating Debriefing Session II at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and in September will perform a new choreography, based on the museum’s collection. In 2014, Public Movement was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize at the Pinchuk Art Center, Kiev.

Public Movement was founded in 2006 by Omer Krieger and Dana Yahalomi. The later became the sole director in 2011. READ MORE