The video shows the same view throughout. The large, empty hall of the west wing of Helsinki Central Railway Station. In the foreground are two wooden benches for listening. Two loudspeakers are mounted high on the far wall, one on each side.
Twilight of the Idols
Twilight of the Idols reinterprets Helsinki’s best-known statues through sound. The work was realised by playing a tone corresponding to each sculpture’s structural resonant frequency, causing the statues to vibrate. These vibrations were recorded from the surfaces of the sculptures using contact microphones and played back to the statues in a continuous feedback loop.
The resulting sound work presents the individual sounds of the statues of Alexander II, Aleksis Kivi, Havis Amanda, K. J. Ståhlberg, J. L. Runeberg, the Three Smiths and Mannerheim. By shifting attention from their familiar appearance to their resonant sounds, the work unsettles established ways of encountering these public monuments.
The work was developed in a series of peer workshops for visually impaired people organised by visual artist JP Kaljonen.
Work info
JP Kaljonen, Simon Forström, Daniel Motola (sound engineer), sound installation, 58min/loop, stereo/subwoofer, Helsinki Central Railway Station, west wing (The Finnish Civic Museum), 10.7.–10.8.2026, Finland, 2025.