Helsinki’s Flow Festival is a pioneering carbon-neutral event, but its art exhibitions disappear into the interior
The last thing I expected was to go in search of art at Helsinki’s Flow Festival (August 12-14), which is a very popular music festival every year after a two-year hiatus caused by the pandemic. A large installation work by Iraqi artist Adel Abidin, who lives in Helsinki. A musical manifesto, it piqued my interest. Organized by the music collective Nuspirit Helsinki, the festival has grown from a modest, nu jazz and soul-influenced beginning since 2004 in an old railway warehouse with less than 5,000 spectators. Now held in Suvilahti, a former power plant near the hipster district of Kallio, with 90,000 visitors (ready to pay €199 each for a three-day ticket) its line-up crosses the threshold between mainstream and eclectic, including international events such as such as Florence and the Machine, Gorillaz and the legendary 1980s band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, along with local Finnish talent.
I wanted to know how the art interventions—some of which felt like theme park or street art—would read in such a large context, so I spent the first couple of days just trying to find the art. It kept eluding me. Playful Millennial Muses for example, Björk Hijoorti’s and Tiia Kasurinen’s murals and animations became psychedelic backdrops for electronic DJs. This became a theme.
In the experimental Other Sound hall, installation art – put together by design collective Sun Effects, which has done Flow’s stage lighting and visuals since 2007 – appeared to be part of the decor, including Ville Mäkelä’s clown-faced depiction of Putin in a neon suit hidden behind the bar. Merle Karp’s two-channel video installation about the glorious nature felt more atmospheric than a work about the terrifying future effects of climate change. “Light and video works can be considered abstract compared to other art forms,” said the collective’s artistic director Matti Jykylä. “But this exhibition is about reality. Merle Karps’ video work may be utopian on the surface, but as Southern Europe, California, etc. burn, the work becomes super concrete.
Environmental awareness is a huge thing in Flow’s pioneering carbon-neutral approach, where the return lines for glasses (1 euro return each) were longer than for organic food concepts. With no red meat or poultry on offer, this wasn’t your typical festival food selection. “Music is only one part of the Flow experience,” says the festival’s artistic director Tuomas Kallio. “When Kuvataide was always present at the festival, initially mainly through video, light and various design projects, we have opened up especially to installations and spatial works.”
Here is Abidin’s place A musical manifesto Cirko’s space stands out. In a series of five musical vignettes, the artist sang slightly modified lyrics of untitled pop songs in a strange form. In one, his body is branded into edible parts of an animal, and in another, he is the sprawling form of a slaughtered man. Abidin sings without even trying – an interesting choice for a festival with such a high production value – although the only video without lyrics is the strongest. There were black screens to indicate video deletion and evocative analog-quality still images. Each video was screened in a randomized fashion that negated any kind of linear narrative. If you could get past the atonal vocals and occasionally unconvincing roles, this piece showed Abidin – known for his ironic references to identity politics and the language of fear – under introspection, creating a certain vulnerability. The work refers to the cultural property that is the burden of an immigrant seeking artistic asylum.
I lay on plywood beds in Tiilikello x Polestar – a wonderful gas meter-turned-art space organized by Emmi Kattelus – to experience the bulbous, chandelier-like sculpture. Blowing Flower Hanna Vihriälä. It hung from thousands of cables under a dramatic domed ceiling, which changed color as part of Antti Tolvi’s low-frequency vibration – a sound and light work called Butterfly effect– that I felt in my body. I thought it was perhaps the most suitable art form for such a context: abstract, wordless and immersive.