The ANTI Festival International Live Art Prize: A Brief History in 3 Parts

Part I: The Live Art Prize

In 2014, the ANTI Festival, under the artistic direction of Johanna Tuukkanen and Gregg Whelan, debuted The ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art. The idea for this award had been proposed in 2013 by Kari Voutila, who was the chair of ANTI’s board at the time. The award was funded by the Saastamoinen Foundation, known for its support of Finnish science and the arts. Päivi Karttunen, chair of the Saastamoinen art committee, introduced the idea of supporting the ANTI Festival from the premise that it was strategically important to support art in a multitude of different forms. The Saastamoinen Foundation is known for its art collection, which is housed in the EMMA/Espoo Museum of Modern Art, where it is on public display. Karttunen was interested in supporting more experimental art. For Karttunen, the collaboration with the ANTI Festival resulted in a new work of art that was positioned in public space rather than within the walls of the museum. Supporting experimental art was important to Karttunen and the Saastamoinen Foundation. Supporting experimental art that was happening in the city of Kuopio, which also happened to be the original home of the Foundation in addition to the site of ANTI, was also important. (1)
 

The support of the Saastamoinen Foundation has been incredibly generous, especially given that this prize is for experimental, ephemeral art that cannot be easily collected or displayed in a museum. The artist receives 30,000 euros: a cash prize of 15,000 euros for the artist and 15,000 euros towards support of the production of the performance by the artist that will be staged the following year at the ANTI Festival. Given what was at stake, it was important for Tuukkanen and Whelan to set up a rigorous review process in order to ensure that the initial pool of artists included many qualified names that could get nominated for the prize. The process began with Tuukkanen and Whelan reaching out to curators, festival directors, writers, and artists for recommendations. The recommendations were passed on to the shortlisting committee, whose job is to narrow the field down to four names/collectives. A separate jury, comprised of people who are not directly affiliated with the ANTI Festival, is responsible for reviewing the dossiers of the artists, interviewing the artists, and finally making a selection, announced on the final day of the ANTI Festival. (2)

As of this writing, 9 artists have been awarded the prize, beginning with Cassils (US/CA) in 2014, followed by Willoh S. Wieland (AU) in 2015, Terika Haapoja (FI) in 2016, Tania EL Khoury (LB) in 2017, Sonya Lindfors (FI) in 2018, Dana Michel (CA) in 2019, Brian Fuata (AU) in 2020, Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, (PL/UK), in 2021, and Latai Taumoepeau (AU/TO) in 2022. 2023 is the 10th anniversary (ANTIversary) of the Live Art Prize. Cassils, who was awarded the first Live Art Prize and who is chairing the jury responsible for awarding the prize in 2023, has written about the importance of this prize for the 2021 ANTIZINE, which celebrated the 20th ANTIversary of the ANTI Festival. 

In 2014 I was announced as the first ever 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 artists. Also having a financial award that allows to contribute to the sustainability of practice is very meaningful.
(3)

Part II: The Evolution of the ANTI Festival

The advent of the ANTI Live Art Prize was mutually beneficial to the reputation of the artists and the ANTI Festival, cementing its status as an international event that attracted audiences, curators, producers, and writers from all over the world. In the text quoted above, Cassils also remarked on how nice it was that Kuopio is a small, intimate city that makes it possible for the ANTI Festival to include local artists and members of the community. Indeed, in spite of producing a program that includes a roster of artists from many parts of the world, the nature and feeling of the ANTI Festival has not departed from its original mission of engaging community that characterized its first iteration in 2002, organized by the Arts Council of North Savo and sponsored by the City of Kuopio and the Ministry of Education. The festival was structured as an event with time and site-specific work that occurred outside of traditional art venues. The festival directors, Tuukkanen and visual artist Erkki Soininen, secured spaces such as an elementary school, an indoor swimming pool, and the War Hero’s Cemetery for the performances. The first ANTI Festival, scheduled for late October, took place mostly outdoors and involved a lot of walking. Midway through, the artists and audience experienced a surprise snowfall. While there was a Winter ANTI in 2016, that was an anomaly. For the most part, the ANTI Festival has been scheduled in the first part of September. 

The first iteration of the ANTI Festival included mostly Finnish artists, although it was already clear that Tuukkanen and Soininen had ambitions to stage a festival that showcased Eastern Finland/Kuopia and Finnish artists while including a roster of international artists. In 2002, international artists included Marisa Carnesky, Gillian Dyson, Peter J. Evans, Christopher Hewitt, Lone Twin/Gary Winters and Gregg Whelan from the UK and Keiji Haino from Japan. Subsequent iterations included artists from Germany, India, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, China, Poland, Australia, Ireland, Chile, and the United States. The early versions of the ANTI Festival included Finnish artists who were already or have subsequently become very well known, including Annette Arlander, Heidi Fast, Reijo Kela, Essi Kausalainen and Leena Kela, who is presently the artistic director of New Performance Turku. (4)

From its inception, the ANTI Festival began with a day-long seminar that included presentations, artist’s talks, films, and occasionally live performance. Tuukkanen and Soininen obtained funding to invite academics and critics who would present at the seminar and later write about the festival. This tradition was continued after Soininen stepped down and Gregg Whelan assumed the position of co-artistic director in 2007. In the most recent iterations of the festival, the presentations, artist’s talks, films, and interviews have been woven into the festival schedule, taking place throughout the event.

Part III: Shortlist Live!

From 2002 until 2014, the year that the first Live Art Prize was awarded to Cassils, the ANTI Festival had expanded to include an artist in residence, collaboration with other festivals, and publications that included two beautifully produced catalogs: ANTI-Contemporary Art Festival 2002-2006, edited by Mirka Niskala (2007), and ANTIVERSARY, edited by Tuukkanen, Whelan, Laura Tervo, and Minna Jaakkola (2012). Beginning in 2014, The ANTI Festival began publishing ANTIZINE, a print catalog for each festival that first appeared at the same time as the Live Art Prize (5). The Live Art Prize increased the visibility of the ANTI Festival in the international performance art sector, in part because it was the only prize for live art, and in part because it gave the ANTI Festival the funds to reserve more expensive venues where the work would be premiered the following year. The only drawback was that the festival audience only experienced the work of the artist who won the prize, rather than the work of all the artists who had made the short list. This inspired Tuukkanen and Whelan to approach the Kone Foundation, who agreed to work with the Saastamoinen Foundation to fund Shortlist Live! The generous funding granted by the two foundations allowed the ANTI Festival to bring all four artists to Kuopio, accommodate larger audiences in more expensive venues, and give all four shortlisted artists equal exposure. The funding also permitted the ANTI Festival to produce a print publication. Edited by Heidi Backstrӧm, SHORTLIST LIVE! 1, 2, 3, and 4, included essays from writers that the artists had invited to engage with their work and an interview with the Live Art Prize winner from the previous year. Shortlist Live! demonstrated the caliber of the shortlisted artists and made it possible for the audience to see why these artists had been chosen. Tuukkanen and Whelan wrote in SHORTLIST LIVE! 1, “it is our hope, and this is perhaps our key ambition for the prize, and the one that Shortlist Live! -program moves us some steps closer to achieving, that all artists involved–in very straightforward ways–benefit from the process.” (6)

The Kone Foundation agreed to fund Shortlist Live! for four years. As of this writing, the Kone Foundation is no longer funding Shortlist Live! What is more, there have been quite a few changes since the first Shortlist Live! Program took place in 2019. There was the pandemic, which meant that some artists were unable to travel to Finland. The winner of the Live Art Prize in 2020, Brian Fuata, had to perform via zoom due to travel restrictions. In 2021, Whelan stepped down from the position of co-artistic director. That same year, Tuukkanen took a position with the City of Oulu as the Head of Cultural Services and Director of Cultural Centre Valve. Elisa Itkonen, who had been with the ANTI Festival since 2015 as production manager, became the solo executive director and the leading curator of the festival (7). In reflecting on her time as director of the ANTI Festival, Tuukkanen suggested that it was not easy to put together an annual festival, especially one that has grown so large. Funding, Tuukkanen noted, changes from year to year. The festival organizers know this, but the audience does not, and there is always the fear of disappointing the audience (8). Fortunately, this won’t be the case in 2023, as Itkonen has managed to fund a 5th edition of Shortlist Live! The ANTI Festival audience will be able to see the work of all four shortlisted artists–Joshua Serafin, Autumn Knight, Tiziano Cruz, and Jota Mombaça, as well as Latai Taumoepeau’s ANTI Live Art Prize performance. 

In Finnish, ANTI means gift. The Live Art Prize is an incredible gift. In the essay cited above, Cassils concluded that “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.”(9) The Live Art Prize is indeed a cultural vanguard that stands strong against intolerance, injustice, and inequity. Happy 10th Birthday, Live Art Prize!

Jennie Klein

Jennie Klein is a professor of contemporary art history and performance art at Ohio University, Athens OH. She first came to the ANTI Festival in 2007 and has enjoyed watching it develop from a small and intimate festival to an international festival that has maintained its commitment to radical and experimental art.

Photos: Pekka Mäkinen

1 Päivi Karttunen, “Email to Author,” July 5, 2023.
2 Johanna Tuukkanen, “Interview with Author,” August 15, 2023.
3 Cassils, “Big Statement from a Small Town,” ANTIZINE 9 (2021), 32-33.
4 Much of this information can be found in Mirka Niskala, ed., ANTI-Contemporary Art Festival 2002-2006, Kuopio: Savonia University of Applied Science, 2007, 12-18.
5 All volumes of ANTIZINE through 2021 are available on issuu.
6 Johanna Tuukkanen and Gregg Whelan, “Thank You,” SHORTLIST LIVE! 1, Heidi Backstrӧm, ed., Kuopio and London: ANTI Contemporary Art Festival and LADA Live Art Development Agency, 2019, 7.
7 In the online ANTIZINE August 2022 edition, Itkonen announced that she has convened an advisory group that includes Season Butler, who served on the committee responsible for creating the shortlist, and Tania EL Khoury, winner of the prize in 2017. Elisa Itkonen, “Curator’s Greeting, ANTIZINE 31.8.2022, https://antifestival.com/kuraattorin-tervehdys/.
8 Tuukkanen, “Interview with Author,” August 15, 2023.
9 Cassils, “Big Statement from a Small Town,” 32-33.

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

Cassils: Big Statement from a Small Town