Finland | ANTI Contemporary Art Festival

Children and teenagers are the focus of this year's ANTI Contemporary Art Festival in Kuopio, Finland (23-28 September), which presents site- and time-specific works made for public space. An international seminar takes place 26 September on the theme.

The international festival programme consists of work where the youngest family members or youngsters nearing adulthood are either the theme or an active part of the production. Children and young people as a theme of a Finnish contemporary arts festival is a unique phenomenon as the performances here are not targeted at an audience of children.

The most visible and unquestionably the most audible event will be the Megaphone Project by Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey (AU). The performance has been hugely popular in Australia and it consists of 25 bright red megaphones that invite people to join in to create a shared sound field. The project will also travel to Iisalmi during the festival week. Another Australian visitor is The Walking Neighbourhood, a work based on Lenine Bourke's idea, where children and teenagers work with the artists for two weeks to create walking tours based on their own interests in Kuopio. These thematic tours are available during the festival weekend.

How would you react if you walked into a barber's or hair salon and were greeted by a bunch of kids with scissors in their hands? A group of children do a week-long course in hair-cutting for Haircuts by Children, a performance by the Canadian company Mammalian Diving Reflex. For three days a team of 4th grade pupils take over the Style in Room hair salon, ready to make their customers' wishes come true. Another fruit of intensive work is Assembly by Nicola Conibere (UK). It will be created in collaboration with students from upper secondary school and will examine the ways that bodies relate to each other during the performance. Assembly lasts for several hours and is a varied performance that changes as the viewers change.

Two workshop performances deal with the city of Kuopio as a place to live. A Girls' Town is a textual workshop arranged by artist Suvi Nurmi (FI). It mixes playfulness with anarchy by allowing girls to redefine law and disorder and rewrite the city's bylaws. The new bylaws will be exhibited at the Kuopio Market Square between 25 and 28 September.

International seminar

Children operating in the field of contemporary art - subjects or objects? An international seminar will be held at the Kuopio Academy of Design Auditorium, Piispankatu 8, Kuopio, on Friday, 26 September 2014, between 1 pm and 6 pm. Register for the seminar by 14 September!

The winner of the new and significant Finnish art award, the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, will be announced at the Festival. The prize is funded by the Saastamoinen Foundation. An international jury, chaired by Ruth Mackenzie (UK), has chosen the winner from six nominees. The 13^th ANTI Festival will expand its operations to public spaces in Northern Savo at the end of September and audiences will be offered events to watch and also to participate in.

ANTI Festival presents live, sonic, visual and text-based art from today’s most exciting and innovative artists in the Finnish town of Kuopio. Free of charge ANTI Festival is a meeting place for artists and audiences fascinated by how art shapes and responds to the places and spaces of everyday life.