Tan, Kai Syng 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4491-7166 and Latham, Alan
(2015)
ANTI Adult RUN! RUN! RUN!
[Performance]
(Unpublished)
Abstract
GALLERY: http://kaisyngtan.com/portfolio/antiadultrun/ VIDEO CLIPS: https://vimeo.com/144658511 https://vimeo.com/138449874 MEDIA ENGAGEMENT: Newspaper and radio (in Finnish) Yle Uutiset http://bit.ly/2dwnNqT Real Time Arts (Australia) review: goo.gl/LTLYD0 CONFERENCE PRESENTATION ABOUT THIS WORK: Royal Geographical Society RGS-IBG Conference 2016 goo.gl/GLq45p QUESTIONS: With a logocentric, technology-saturated world, and divisive silos of the elite art world and the academy, could individuals – as adults, academics and artists – be taught the gift (‘anti’ in the Finnish language) of having unadulterated fun, and question existing orthodoxies? Through artist-led creative interfaces and initiatives, what new insights arise, regarding participation, audience and place to promote public health and enrich existing understanding of wellbeing? RIGOUR, ORIGINALITY: Also known as the #antiadultrun, this was a series of masterclasses run by experts aged 7-14 to teach adults (top age 82) how to re-claim fun and be ‘old children’, like the Chinese Daoist philosopher Lao Zi (literally ‘old child’, 500BCE). The workshops draw on my research since 2009 on the ‘gentle anarchism’ of Lao Zi, and the Situationists’ notion of the revolution of everyday life, and the childlike and subversive qualities of running. Commissioned by the annual ANTI Festival of Contemporary Arts, this was held in Kuopio Finland, September 2015, which also featured at the festival was acclaimed live artist Heather Cassils. Around 40 participants enjoyed the 5 masterclasses that took place at a local stadium (before the Kuopio Annual Marathon kicked off), and the Kuopio Market Square in Finland. The ‘Masters’ were recruited from a local school, and the artwork was co-developed from 2-days/4 hours of workshops. I invited geographer Dr Alan Latham (UCL Senior Lecturer) to work on this with me. SIGNIFICANCE: Feedback from participants and the masters were 100% positive. We successfully demonstrated that running be activated as a critical and creative tool to cut across and indeed question the boundaries of language and culture (Finnish; UK; NZ; Singapore), discipline (geography; fine art) and age (adults and non-adults). The work is a strong example of everyday revolution and public intervention through interdisciplinary and intercultural and intergenerational collaboration. We subverted some of the expectations around the roles of children and adult. Through a clever design (simple, accessible, fun, interactive), generated new insights about participation, audience and place that contribute to existing efforts to promote public health and wellbeing. FEEDBACK include: 'The ANTI festival project was very interesting and we have nice memories about it. Let us know if your making this kind of project again sometimes here in Kuopio! - Maria Ikonen ANTI - Contemporary Art Festival: from http://antifestival.com/en/info/ ANTI - Contemporary Art Festival works with innovative artists on projects that explore and explode urban space. The next festival will take place between 8th and 13th September 2020. ANTI began life in 2002. Since then we’ve produce 18 editions of ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival and have established a year-round programme of artist residencies and cultural projects and events. In 2014 we established the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, one of Finland’s richest cultural prizes. Held annually in Kuopio, Finland, the city hosts the festival, projects by artists from around the world inhabit the spaces of public life – homes, shops, city squares, business, forests, lakes – and directly engage communities and audiences in the making and showing of their work. The festival is free to attend. We’ve presented and commissioned some of the world’s most exciting artists from USA, Australia, Mexico, Japan and Europe along with leading artists from Finland, Sweden, Norway and Iceland. We’re proud to support an ever-growing generation of emerging artists, often presenting artists internationally for the first time. Photo credit: ANTI-ADULT RUN! RUN! RUN! MASTERCLASS #antiadultrun, ANTI - Contemporary Art Festival 2015 - Photo: Pekka Mäkinen
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