ANTI Contemporary Art Festival 2018: Games and Play

This curatorial practice research gathered international performance makers with academics and actors working in the fields of performance studies, digital culture, commercial digital game design/production to deliver a programme of publicly sited participatory performance works, a public discussion platform, workshops and pop-up ‘play space’ focused on how contemporary performance makers are exploring ideas of games and play and how those explorations might offer insights and points of discussion for the (digital) games sector and a broad public audience. Produced by ANTI Contemporary Art Festival (Kuopio, Finland) the research presented an interdisciplinary set of enquiries that, across creative and discursive frameworks examined how play and games of various nature (digital, analogue, social, discreet, child-focused, adult, leisure/sport-based etc.) can be considered as engendering key individual/social practices through which we apprehend and understand each other and the environments we inhabit. The performance works, play space and public discussion offered participatory engagement with, and reflection on, these propositions to a broad public audience of 10,500 people, with presentations from: Madeleine Flynn & Tim Humphrey (AU), Pivot; Action Hero (UK), Oh Europa; Meetlab (HU), TRON; Sanna From & Riina Hannuksela (FI), I Love Me Lunch Play; Anna Maria Häkkinen, Lotta Suomi & Emil Uuttu (FI), Wrestling Club (performance and workshops); John Court (FI/UK) and Mark Harvey (NZ), Drop Kick; Theatre of Research (DE): Playing Up; Richard DeDomenici (UK), The Swivelympics; Hai Art, Antye Greie-Ripatti (DE/FI), Juan Duarte Regino (MX), Eerika Jalasaho (FI), Sound Map Kuopio; Point and Place (UK), Hexagons; ANTI Curatorial Team, Pop-Up Play Space. A public discussion event, How Do We Talk About Games, included presentations by Jonne Arjoranta (University of Jyväskylä, post-doctoral research in Digital Culture), Jussi Loukiainen (CEO, Platonic Partnership Oy), Helmi Korhonen (digital game play specialist, Digipelirajat’/Sosped Foundation), Matti Tuomela (performance critic, The Finnish Critics’ Association (SARV)).

• https://antifestival.com/en/