Photos: Jouni Ihalainen

Silence festival gathers annually performances and artists from Finland and abroad to Lapland. The multidisciplinary program is spread in and around Kaukonen village. All kinds of buildings from community house’s dance hall to barns and living rooms turn into performance sites for the festival week and both the artists and the festival visitors can let go of ordinary thinking in the nightless night.

I work at the Silence Festival as an artistic director together with the spellbinding composer Outi Tarkiainen. My responsibility is curating and organising the program of the performing arts (with special focus on contemporary circus and an eye on the edges of dance, theatre, puppetry and other performing art fields). Outi takes care of the music program with particular interest in contemporary classical music.
Each year the program has some ready pieces and some premieres but our task is also to bring together artists from our fields to make new collaborations during the festival week. In addition to us the hard-working brains, hands and actors behind the festival are the festival director Joonas Martikainen and the producer Jonna Leppänen.

PHOTO: Arttu Nieminen

SILENCE FESTIVAL 2018

http://www.vimeo.com/274842292

http://www.hiljaisuusfestivaali.fi

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Silence organisation has also other on-going projects:

We run an Artist Residency program in the peaceful Kaukonen village outside the festival times: www.hiljaisuusfestivaali.fi/residenssi
(In English: http://www.hiljaisuusfestivaali.fi/residency )
I’m hosting the residencies together with Joonas, Jonna and a few others and also made the selections of the applications this year (with help from experts in different fields) that we received through an open call.

Seasons of Silence concert and performance series brings musicians and performing artists together for interesting collaborations in Särestöniemi Museum in the drastically varying seasons of far north. I am curating and co-ordinating the events together with the beautiful clarinetist Lauri Sallinen and the producers Jonna and Joonas.

http://www.hiljaisuusfestivaali.fi/vuodenajat

Photo: Satu Nurmio

Northern Network for Performing Arts is a brand new network of artists, organisations, festivals and communities working in the field of performing arts in the High North region in the Nordic countries. The Network aims to strengthen performing arts’ collaboration in the region and to improve the regional capacity in international collaboration, in sharing information and in best practices, and provides a platform for encounters. Silence Festival organisation is the initiator of the network.
http://www.hiljaisuusfestivaali.fi/northernnetwork/
http://www.hiljaisuusfestivaali.fi/northernplatform1

Photo: Ryoko Uyama