Vesa-Pekka Rannikko‘s Rat and Border Dog (featured image) and Saara Ekström‘s Amnion have been selected in the video art competition of the international video art festival VIDEOFORMES. The festival takes place from March 13 to 16, 2025 in Clermont-Ferrand, France.

Vesa-Pekka Rannikko’s Rat and Border Dog (2024) is a poetic animation fable about the insignificance of the human-built border zone for nature. The work is a hand-drawn sketch-like animation, where animals, plants and poems are drawn into the picture and build a collage of parallel events. Animation is a network where the human logic takes a back seat.

Vesa-Pekka Rannikko is a visual artist who lives and works in Helsinki. He works with varying fields of art: sculpture, video, installation and performance. He holds degrees from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts (1997) and from University of Arts and Design Helsinki (1995), and he has also studied at the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Rannikko creates performances as a member of a group (NE+ and BAR) and by himself. His works have been presented in exhibitions since the early 1990s, including Galleri Lars Olsen in Copenhagen (2012), Venice Biennale in (2011), Amos Anderson Art Museum (2003) and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (2008, 2007) in Helsinki.

Saara Ekström’s Amnion (2023) shows what landfills on the fringes of cities reveal all about our culture, habits, fears and desires. Here treasures turn into trash and the excess of our discarded welfare and cheap labor dances in the wind. Shot in 8mm film, Amnion (innermost membrane enclosing an embryo) is a dark and melancholy vision, where the organic merges with the synthetic, polymer molecules imitate the DNA helix, and new life begins to take shape under transparent folds of plastic wrapping.

Saara Ekström works in film, photography, text and installation. Chronotopes where time and place densify, time that nurtures and erodes, the ambivalent desire to both remember and forget are at the core of her art. Ekström’s work has been shown extensively in various museums and festivals in Europe, the Americas and Asia. She received the State Prize for Visual Arts in 2023, the Finnish media art prize AVEK Award in 2018 and the prizes of SW Finland in 2017, Finnish Art Society in 1995 and the Aboa prize in 1994. She has been the Helsinki Festival Artist in 2005 and was nominated for both Ars Fennica and Carnegie Art Award prizes in 2010.

VIDEOFORMES
March 13 to 16, 2025
Clermont-Ferrand, France

More information: VIDEOFORMES

VIDEOFORMES is an organization devoted to the dissemination and production of video and digital art since 1984. It produces an annual international festival in Clermont-Ferrand, presenting the latest in digital creation: installations, videos, performances, multidisciplinary digital creations, hybrid forms.

AV-arkki has promoted and distributed Finnish media art since 1989. AV-arkki’s promotional efforts have made the artists’ participation in this event possible. If you want to hear the latest news from our distribution, subscribe to our newsletter!