The festival season is here!

 

The ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival starts in Kuopio today. In celebration of its 20th anniversary this year, the entire festival programme is free for audiences to attend. The festival's theme is "giving and being in the act of giving". Several of the artworks on display can be experienced alone or in small groups. 

 

One of the performances on the ANTI festival programme is the greatly anticipated A Great Mess

by the W A U H A U S artist collective that premiered in Helsinki a couple of weeks ago. The performance takes its audience to a waste disposal site, the largest landfill in the Eastern Finland area, where it promises to offer new perspectives on the interdependencies between living organisms and inert materials as well as all of us. Bring a warm coat and be ready to see your surroundings in a new light. 

 

Turku International Puppetry Festival or TIP-fest will be taking place 3–7 November. The festival programme is set for a formal launch at the beginning of October, but the artistic directors are already promising an exciting series of shows featuring music, sounds and rhythm. This year's festival will be a physical-virtual hybrid like last year with live performances taking place across a number of venues in Turku while others will be available to view online. 

 

The festival is a showcase of Finnish puppetry art, with a line-up featuring Perrine Ferrafiat, Emma Golnick, Elina Lajunen, Aino Lehtovaara, Valtteri Lipasti, Antti-Juhani Manninen, Kari Mäkiranta, Erika Mälkki, Anna Nekrassova, Mila Nirhamo, Outi Sippola, Marja Susi, Antti Tolvi, Anna Uschanov, Pauliina Vesslin and Timo Väntsi. This year's international highlight will be a visit by Slovenian artist Matija Solce, a puppet theatre and musical phenomenon, whose works show how organically and effortlessly puppet theatre elements can be used to create a breathtaking rhythmic and resonant musical world. 

 

The Baltic Circle international festival for contemporary theatre and performance will be starting in Helsinki a couple of weeks later, on November 19. This year's festival is making an early start with Milla Martikainen, Maija Nurmio, Pauli Riikonen and Essi Rossi’s Nightschool Nightschool — Baltic Circle performance in September, however. The full festival programme is set to be announced on October 1.