SLAARISTOKAUPUNKI

25-27 September 2009
ANTI Festival, Kuopio (Finland)

In the virtual archipelago of Second Life, space is discontinuous and walking is anachronistic. Stephen Hodge will lead you on a short Real Life walk to an intimate space, looking out over Lake Kallavesi towards Saaristokaupunki (Kuopio's new district built on the lake's islands). Here, his avatar Drifter Rhode will accompany you on a second walk, this time through a digital landscape. SLaaristokaupunki is for one person at a time. Previous experience in the Second Life environment is not required.

Stephen Hodge is a core member of Wrights & Sites, a group of UK-based artist-researchers with a special relationship to site, city/landscape and walking. His avatar, Drifter Rhode, curates 2ND LIVE. SLaaristokaupunki marks a convergence of these two areas of work, and he is interested in what might be discovered through shifting walking-based practices from Real Life to Second Life.

ANTI is an international contemporary arts festival presenting site-specific works made for public space. Over the past seven years ANTI has presented live, sonic, visual and text-based art from some of today’s most exciting and innovative artists. Finland’s foremost presenter of international Live Art, ANTI is a meeting place for artists and audiences fascinated by how art shapes and responds to the places and spaces of everyday life. The central theme of ANTI 2009 is walking.