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ANTI Contemporary Art Festival, Kuopio, Finland. An annual international site-specific performance festival held in the public spaces of Kuopio

Whelan’s curatorial research, as deployed in his position as Artistic Director of ANTI Contemporary Art Festival, Finland, grew from his work as a founder member of UK performance company Lone Twin: both initiatives share a core focus on contemporary performance and site-specificity. ANTI, which Whelan co-directs with Johanna Tuukkanen, eschews traditional cultural spaces in favour of an investigation into how contemporary performance makers engage with the places, spaces and communities of everyday life. Each iteration, a suite of six festivals are submitted here, aligns that central investigation with a changing set of topographical elements and thematic framings; the festival inhabits different public spaces each year with artists asked to respond to a specific core theme, recent themes include ‘home’, ‘renewal’ and ‘warmth’. A seminar augments the programme offering a discursive space in which to develop, test and extend the festival’s social and cultural concerns. Whelan and Tuukkanen’s curatorial methodology, developed and delivered equally, has two strands: 1) an annual open call asks artists to submit proposals, and 2) previous festival artists are invited to return. The open call aimed at developing early-career artists, acts as a global survey of new performance-makers engaged with site-specificity, the invitation process allows the festival to support the on-going concerns of established practitioners. Across 2008 – 2013 Whelan and Tuukkanen commissioned 105 artists, from 20 countries, to create site-specific performances and presented six day-length seminars with contributions from 33 academics from 12 countries. In 2010 to celebrate a decade of activity Whelan and Tuukkanen published ANTIVERSARY - Performance, Live Art and Site-Specificity a collection of articles by international academics, artists and writers detailing the festival’s history and impact on the practice and study of site-specific performance making. ANTI Festival 2008–2013 was supported by, among others, the European Commission, Arts Council Finland and Kuopio City Council.