New audio art transports listeners to an alternate version of Kalasatama

The art entity A Stream among Streams, curated by HAM Helsinki Art Museum for Kalasatama, is growing thanks to the addition of an audio work by Artist Flis Holland. The piece, created in collaboration with Composer Juuli Haverinen and 16 voice actors, can be experienced in Kalasatamanpuisto Park for the next three years.

The piece will transport listeners to an alternate version of Kalasatama in Kalasatamanpuisto Park. Artist Flis Holland’s audio work 25/7 involves an imagining of a sci-fi type experiment, where implants have been fitted in Kalasatama residents. The aim is to offer residents an extra hour in their day, but the implants start to malfunction.  

The piece ties in with Kalasatama’s status as a hub for smart city activities and innovation pilots. Flis Holland was interested in the Smart Kalasatama project run by innovation company Forum Virium, part of the City of Helsinki, and its promise to offer Kalasatama residents an extra hour in their day through the use of smart urban tech solutions. In the artist’s piece, this promise is taken literally. Kalasatama locals are transitioned to life with a 25-hour day, while residents of the rest of Helsinki continue with the standard 24 hours.

In the piece, we hear snippets of phone conversations between Kalasatama residents and people living elsewhere, with the time difference causing some digital glitches. The set-up offers a playful way to explore what people would do with their extra hour. It also poses questions about who has access to this valuable additional resource, and what happens when different future perspectives collide. The artist seeks to highlight norms associated with how we use and experience time, and their piece looks at people whose time is already out of sync, such as neurodivergent or chronically ill people. 

Composer Juuli Haverinen’s audio design plays a major role in the piece, using field recordings made in Kalasatama Park. The work was brought to life by 16 voice actors.

The sound artwork can be accessed in Finnish and English through the Echoes app, and uses geolocation technology. The various scenes of the audio piece will be located along the footpaths and in their immediate vicinity in Kalasatamanpuisto Park. You can listen to the piece either by visiting www.flisholland.com/257 on your mobile phone and downloading an app to your phone, or by scanning the QR code on on the artwork label. This can be found at the end of the park closest to Redi shopping centre, at the gateway framing the path. You can listen to the scenes in the location of your choosing, including remotely if you prefer. Transcripts of the conversations will be available.

Flis Holland (UK/FI) tracks the collisions of neurodivergent, trans and celestial bodies. Using video, apps, and audio tours, they try to resist visual capture and categorisation, to loosen the link between seeing a body and knowing it. They hold a Master’s in Fine Art and a Master’s in Aerospace Engineering & Astronautics.

The piece will be unveiled at an event open to the public on Tuesday 4 November 2025, 12:00–13:00. We will be meeting at M8S Hub & Studio at Arielinkatu 16, from where we will continue to the piece’s location in the park. The work will be unveiled by Director of HAM Helsinki Art Museum Arja Miller, with Artist Flis Holland and the composer of the piece, Juulia Haverinen, also in attendance.

Flis Holland’s 25/7 forms part of HAM’s A Stream among Streams – an ensemble of public artworks curated for Kalasatama by Aleksandra Kiskonen and Kristiina Ljokkoi. The ensemble explores the use of technological and virtual applications in urban planning, employing an approach combining art and research. The first of the works, Laura Beloff’s R-Bus,was installed in 2023, with the remaining two set to take up their places in Kalasatama in the coming years.

Pieces of art are commissioned for Helsinki thanks to the ‘Percent for Art Principle’ the City follows, and this has also been true in the construction of the Kalasatama area. As part of the Kalasatama Environmental Art Project, permanent and temporary pieces of art and events are being brought to the area in collaboration between the Helsinki City Executive Office, Helsinki’s Urban Environment Division and Culture and Leisure Division, and HAM. The Environmental Art Project is funded by a floor square metre based fee collected from developers operating in the area. HAM serves as the curator of public art works for pieces that form part of Helsinki’s art collection.