Kari Yli-Annala is a visual artist, researcher, and lecturer and teacher in the theory and history of moving image. He has been engaged with making video works since the early 1990s. In 2005-2007 he held a series of three installation exhibitions in Helsinki: Renée Sourange, Suomalainen kummitustarina (A Finnish Ghost Story) and Eräs Kanssakäymisen muoto (A Kind of Communication). Along with the process, also a series of video works on contemporaneousness was born. They included, for example, Guardian Creatures (2005); 75’ Mainstream Catastrophe (2003), which addressed a sudden, frightening change in a safe environment; and Inbetweening (2007), which studied the interface between the dead and the living.
Yli-Annala’s video art extends in scale from performative to structural works, although the latter often also contain narrative elements. Lately he has been interested especially in the form of video essay. His three-part video essay, War During Lifetime, will be completed in 2008. Yli-Annala has also created video performances and written articles about video art, moving image installation art and experimental film.