Year 2022 has been especially dark as a result of the inhuman war in Ukraine. The winter is long and dark in Finland. Traditional Christmas lights bring much needed light to our environment and minds. And so does the annual light festival Lux Helsinki.
Lux Helsinki 2021 was postponed to 2022 due to the coronavirus situation. I’m glad that this luminous festival was organised once again in 2023.
The festival spreads across Helsinki. As always, most art pieces are located in the City Center. This year, there are works also in Suvilahti, Ruoholahti, Korkeasaari Zoo, and in various cultural centres in Kannelmäki, Malmi, Itäkeskus and Vuosaari.
It’s great to see how these marvellous artworks full of light, colors and sounds, fill the city. The installations are remarkably well thought-out. They interact smoothly with the surrounding architecture and urban planning.
In these posts regarding Lux Helsinki I write about both the architecture and the artworks.
I chose to explore the all of the installations in the City Center and most of the artwork in Suvilahti and Ruoholahti. In the first part I’m writing of my journey in the City Center from north to south, from the Olympic Stadium to the Helsinki Music Centre. There are many beautiful buildings and great architecture on this route.
The weather was a bit crispy as it usually is during Lux Helsinki. But it’s not a problem with right kind of clothing.
Yle: Mauri Ahola – Teemu Kokkonen (FIN) – The Face of the City
I walked first to the Helsinki Olympic Stadium to see the installation The Face of the City. It was projected on the façade of the TAHTO Center for Finnish Sports Culture close to the Olympic Stadium. Finnish scriptwriter and director Mauri Ahola and media professional Teemu Kokkonen have done a brilliant work with their experimental work, mixing material from old silent films and modern computer-created imagery.
The music is performed by the legendary Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by equally legendary Hannu Lintu with excellent sound design by Anssi Tamminen. The installation was produced by Yle, the Finnish public broadcaster.
The Helsinki Olympic Stadium was completed in 1938 and built for the 1940 Olympics, but unfortunately the World War II led to the cancellation of the event. Finally, 12 years later, the stadium was used as an arena for the 1952 Summer Olympics. After that, it has served as a venue for many sport events, like the World Athletics Championships and megastar concerts, such as Rolling Stones and Madonna. The Rolling Stones has been playing live at the Olympic Stadium for as many as five times from the year 1970!
The Olympic Stadium is an excellent example of the Finnish functionalist style of architecture. It was featured in 2016 in the Architectural Digest as one of the best examples of Olympic architecture. The last big renovation was in 2016-2020 which included a new 20,000 square meter underground facility and a new canopy over the stands.
The Stadium was designed by the architects Yrjö Lindegren and Toivo Jäntti. Really interesting coincidence is that Yrjö Lindegren was an Olympic medallist. He won Gold in the 1948 London Summer Olympics for Town planning. Yes, you read it right, Town planning. Art competitions formed part of the modern Olympic Games from 1912 to 1948. Sport-related themes gave inspiration for the five categories, which were architecture, literature, music, painting, graphic art and sculpture. Now that’s a fun fact.
Next I walked shortly to see the BEAM on Mäntymäen kenttä, right next to the Olympic Stadium. The installation has been created by British design and fabrication studio Lucid Creates and an electric carmaker Polestar from Sweden.
The BEAM is a 30 meters long LED light installation with shifting colors. It is suspended from a steel frame in height of 9 meters, in the middle of four Polestar cars. The BEAM was originally commissioned for Liverpool’s annual outdoor illuminated gallery, River of Light, on the river Mersey.
Composer and Polestar collaborator Lisa Nordström created wonderful music and soundscapes.
Polestar caught my eye some time ago with their television commercial with great architecture on the background. It was filmed on the estuary of Avilés, Asturias, in northwest Spain. The building in commercial was Oscar Niemeyer International Cultural Centre, opened in Spring 2011. It was designed by the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer.
Polestar itself is a very nice looking car. The design of the car blends well with the functionalist style of architecture of the Helsinki Olympic Stadium. Environmental sustainability is really important to me, hence it’s great to see this kind of car in Lux Helsinki.
After the BEAM I walked past the Finnish National Opera and Ballet building to the midpoint of my journey that day, to the third installation. L’Envol by French creative studio Pitaya, founded in 2006 by David Lesort and Arnaud Giroud, is one of my favourites in Lux Helsinki 2023. Origami-like white luminous birds have been positioned high and low to the trees in Hesperia Park between park walkway and Töölönlahti bay. The view was magnificent!
The lights in the lampposts was shut down to let L’Envol birds shine as they should. I have walked this walkway many times and everything looked different this time. The light was somehow eerie. Like from some kind of extraordinary fantasy world. Even the snow looked like something else than snow.
There are many pretty villas on the east bank of Töölönlahti bay. It gives a nice background to the birds. The location is called Linnunlaulu (Bird Song), which is an awe-inspiringly coincidence, since the installation L’Envol consists of birds. There were originally 15 villas, only nine remains today. The photo above includes two of them. Villa Kivi is designed by the architect Selim Lindqvist and Blue Villa by Nikolai Michelsson. Both beautiful villas were built in the 1890s.
The second installation from French creative studio Pitaya is the 18 meters long kinetic and lighting sculpture Whale Ghost in Töölönlahti park. It’s like a moving whale skeleton with changing colors, reminiscent of a live marine mammal. And at the same time it’s like a dead animal, a skeleton. That reflects me of the state of the oceans due to increasing acidity, declining oxygen levels and pollution. That really bothers me.
Many whale species are endangered due to several other threats such as climate change, ship strikes and ocean noise, which all are man-made. Whaling and fishing gear entanglements are major threats to whales as well.
The Whale Ghost reminds me of the magnificent 29 meter Blue Whale Model I saw in American Museum of Natural History in New York. The 9 500 kg model in the museum is made of foam and fiberglass and is suspended by a single steel pipe to the ceiling structures! It was awesome to just lie under the massive whale model and just marvel what a glorious creature blue whale is.
It’s interesting how Pitaya has made the same installation to look like the biggest animals in the world and also one of the smaller one. When I was watching the installation from the other direction, it looked like a comb jelly, otherwise known as ctenophora. Some comb jellies have comb rows that produce a rainbow effect by diffracting light. And that looks awesome! When many whales are endangered species, some ctenophores are invasive species, such as Mnemiopsis leidyi, also known as warty comb jelly or sea walnut. It has caused a dramatic drop in fish populations by competing for the same food sources and eating the young and eggs of the fish.
Helsinki Central Library Oodi, Sanoma House and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma provide a nice background for the Whale Ghost. The installation has same kind of lines as the buildings behind it.
Collectif Coin (FRA) – Abstract
The French company Collectif Coin created Abstract, an installation with movement, sound and light at Kansalaistori. The concept of relativity and time are the inspirations for the repeating 20 minutes loop of the installation.
Helsinki Central Library Oodi and Sanoma House provide background for the Abstract. Especially Oodi works well in this case. The installation moves and forms waves that are similar as the design of the Oodi. Oodi was designed by ALA Architects and was completed in 2018. The Sanoma House was designed by SARC Architects and was completed in 1999. Some of my pictures of these buildings can be found on my portfolio.
Maxim Velčovský (CZE) – The Physical Possibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living
I’m not writing much more about architecture and art in this last part of this post. We all have seen the horrors in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. It’s pretty self-evident that the war should be present in Lux Helsinki 2023. Czech designer Maxim Velčovský has done a good job in bringing some of atmosphere of war to Helsinki. It’s great that Velčovský’s installation The Physical Possibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living was in such a key place in the Central City, right in front of Helsinki Music Centre. There was four cars, destroyed in the war, from four Ukrainians, Anna Denisova, Oleksiy Kabanets, Tetyana and Oleksandr Kovalchyk.
When I was passing by the cars, for some reason, I tried to alienate myself from thinking deeply about the distressing horrors of which these cars are evidence of. Maybe it’s a good thing. Or is it? When watching news, I’ve been on a rollercoaster of negative feelings ever since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine begun in February 2023.
I’m thinking a lot of the people who have lost their family, home, income, drinking water, food, electricity, heating, modes of transport, and life. It’s insane. I’m struggling to understand how this is possible.
I have some knowledge of history and the reasons that have resulted in this war. Still, it doesn’t help much in comprehending the situation. Besides that, we must not forget that there are many other wars ongoing right at this moment.
The war will come to an end some day. I hope that day will come soon.
As always, Lux Helsinki offered me many memorable moments. From happiness to sadness, from astonishment to hopelessness.
But that’s not all. Don’t forget to check out the interesting forthcoming posts of the Lux Helsinki installations in Suvilahti and Ruoholahti.