Pekka Kantonen

Pekka Kantonen belongs to the pioneer generation of Finnish performance, video, environmental, and socially engaged art. In the 1980s, he worked in the land art group Turppi and performance art group Auki. Since the beginning of the 1990s, he has filmed a video diary with his extended family and, together with Lea Kantonen, has carried out community-initiated research projects using different media especially on the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico and in Sápmi. His artistic doctoral thesis, Generational Filming (2017), deals with the participatory video-making method developed by the artist couple. The method creates a shared space of watching which deepens and contradicts the viewing experience. The YouTube project 3 x Decade, which is planned to be continued until 2030, is a video diary covering three decades. The works of Pekka and Lea Kantonen have been presented both locally in community centers and internationally in video festivals and art museums. In 2011, they received the AVEK Media Art Award.