BACK AND FORTH

Performance: 30th of September 2011 at 14.00

ANTI Festival (Kuopio)

Youngsters, seniors, tons of ballons, naked man; a penis.

This was basically the scenario that laid before us when we walked into the College of Social and Health Care in Kuopio, where an unforgettable performance was about to take place.

Photographs by Konsthopp

It was quite obvious that Gatëan Rusquet is a professional perfromance artist — a kind of a person that would sacrifice almost anything in the name of art. And after a little less than one hour of binding, twisting, rubbing and squeezing, you could easily witness the physical tiredness of the artist.

It’s clearly a “knockout” to be an artist in action!

REMAKE, REBUILD AND RENEW

ANTI-Contemporary art festival:

29th of September – 2nd of October 2011 (Kuopio)

Finland was the last destination on our first alternative art tour around Scandinavia. Instead of inhaling the capital, we went straight to Kuopio – a smaller city on the east coast, where the 10^th anniversary of ANTI- festival was celebrated. The theme of this year’s festival was; REMAKE, REBUILD and RENEW.

“The city center of Kuopio is undertaking a great reconstruction”

Since this was my very first time in Finland, I’d been wondering about the country and its people. Who were these Finns and what were they like?

It´s hard to infer about a nation after only staying there for couple of days. But at least I got some hints about the Finnish social behavior;

The standard greeting for Finnish people is a handshake. Hugs and kisses, even on the cheek, are only exchanged between family members and close friends. And the Finnish language. Unfortunately, it lacks a specific word for “please”, so Finns sometimes forget to use it when speaking English, even when they don’t mean to be rude.

And why do I think this is interesting? Simply, because it sounds like Iceland; my country and its people.

“The typical Finn eats a lot of potatoes (and so does the Icelandic’s)”

Over a crisp cool weekend, we got the opportunity to meet some of the world’s best performance artists, party with locals and learn couple of words in the weirdest language on earth.

If you want to see some more photos from Kuopio click here!

Kiitos paljon

“This does not need any further explanation”

Photographs by Konsthopp