Tellervo Kalleinen (Finland, *1975) and Oliver Kochta Kalleinen (Germany, *1971) began to collaborate in 2003 by organizing The First Summit of Micronations in Helsinki (Amorph!03 festival). Since then, they have created numerous participatory art projects, for example Complaints Choirs (ongoing since 2005), which has spread to more than 120 cities and is based an open source principles. They made several cinematic works such as The Making of Utopia (2006), People in White (2011) and Archipelago Science Fiction (2012). In their works, the couple mix up community participation, performance, video storytelling… They bring to public attention apparently simple mechanisms where everyday life meets collective imagination and even utopia. These interventions shake up ongoing tensions in the relation between the individual and the community, the perceived “reality” and the social narrative.
They are founding members of The Speech Karaoke Action Group and YKON.
They have exhibited in venues including Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), P.S.1 (New York), Shedhalle (Zürich), Kunsthalle Fridericianum (Kassel), Hamburg Kunsthalle (Hamburg), KUMU (Tallinn), KIASMA (Helsinki), S.M.A.K. (Gent) and Ars Electronica Center (Linz). Their film works have been shown in venues such as Hot Docs (Toronto), Rome Film Festival (Rome), New Media Festival (Tokyo) and MoMa (New York). In 2012 they received the AVEK media award prize and in 2014 the prestigious Ars Fennica art prize.
