Softback, 255 x 190 mm, 64 pages, 185 g.

Shortlist LIVE! Publication is a bilingual essay publication focusing on Live Art. It presents the annual nominees for the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art and strengthens the offer of art essays in Finland, and globally. In 2021, the nominees are Alex Baczynski-Jenkins (PL/UK), Florentina Holzinger (AT), keyon gaskin (US), and Narcissister (US). The publication is part of Shortlist LIVE! entity, which presents the nominated artists and their works extensively, also live in Kuopio at the ANTI Festival on September 14-19, 2021.

The nominated artists have suggested the authors for their essays themselves. The texts show how diverse group of artists is presented in Shortlist LIVE!, but also how the idea of an artist essay can be approached in many different ways. Doctoral candidate, researcher Georg Döcker provides a comprehensive overview of Florentina Holzinger’s artistic career  and practice with a humorous twist. The meaningfulness of the artist biographies is also reflected by sidony o’neal, who writes about the art of keyon gaskin. gaskin does not want to contextualize their own work with their credentials. Why so and what does it produce for the audience-artist or audience-art relationship? And how to write a fruitful artist essay in this case?

The questions of choreography, touch, and intimacy are in the core of the art of Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, and thus also curator, researcher, and writer Katarzyna Słoboda addresses them in her essay Choreographies of Queer Intimacy – On Alex Baczynski-Jenkins’ Prcatice. The essay on Narcisisster is an excerpt from the article Public Pubic: Narcissister’s Performance of Race, Disavowal, and Aspiration by professor of performance studies Ariel Osterweis, published originally in 2015 in TDR / The Drama Review. Both Słoboda and Osterweis have worked with the artists who they are writing about in their essays and the reader gets to experience the unique sharpness and warmth generated by the familiarity between the writer and the subject.

In addition to artist essays, Shortlist LVE! #3 features an interview with Brian Fuata, the winner of 2020 ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art. As a guest writer-critic and essayist Maaria Ylikangas provides an elegy for performance in a form of lyrical essay.

Shortlist LIVE! publication #3 has been edited by Heidi Backström, translated by Essi Brunberg, and the visual layout is by Tomi Leppänen. The magazine is published in collaboration with ANTI - Contemporary Art Festival and Live Art Development Agency (LADA). Shortlist LIVE! is supported by the Saastamoinen Foundation and the Kone Foundation.

INDEX / SISÄLTÖ

What is Shortlist Live! / Mikä on Shortlist Live! 3

Editorial / Pääkirjoitus 4

Heidi Backström

A Welcome to Shortlist LIVE! 2021 / Tervetulotoivotus 8

Johanna Tuukkanen & Gregg Whelan

Essays on / Esseet

FLORENTINA HOLZINGER 13

Georg Döcker

KEYON GASKIN 25

sidonoy o'neal

ALEX BACZYNSKI-JENKINS 35

Kasia Sloboda

NARCISSISTER 43

Ariel Osterweis

ON WRITING ABOUT PERFORMANCES: Allas. An elegy for performances / ESITYKSESTÄ KIRJOITTAMISESTA – Allas. Elegia esitykselle 52

Maaria Ylikangas

Interview / haastattelu: BRIAN FUATA 59

Heidi Backström