Edible Finns (Jan-Erik Andersson, Kari Juutilainen, Pertti Toikkanen): Ainola Rocks Järvenpään Art Museum ?, Turku Art Museum, 2004.
The Edible Finns were invited to do a performance at the opening of the Ainola exhibition in Järvenpää Art Museum. The exhibition dealt with how the Finnish national composer Sibelius has been pictured in the Fine Arts.
A replica of a piano keyboard was made with Finnish white chocolate and black liquorice. A pre-made tape was made with samples from an interview with Sibelius from 1947, where he talks about how “the silence speaks at Ainola”. Ainola is Sibelius house in the countryside outside Helsinki. This sentence was looped together with samples from some of Sibelius’ works and hip hop and techno loops.
In the middle of the six minutes long piece a pre-recorded version of the Finlandia tune played amateurishly with one finger on piano was mimed by the edible Finns, dressed in suits, rocking in front of the keyboard. The performance ended when the Edible Finns brought out the pieces of the keyboard for the audience to eat, accompanied only by the voice of Sibelius telling how the silence speaks in Ainola.
Usually Edible Finns don’t perform the same performance twice. But Ainola Rocks was also performed when the Turku Art Museum was reopened after a large restauration in 2004. The pictures are from this occasion.
