The Secret Capital of EGS:
2. From Lake Töölö to Finland Station
Location: Poster wall on the sidewalk along Mannerheimintie, near Kiasma
A song carries along the surface of the lake and a train lets out a whistle. Töölönjärvi lake is the starting point for journeys and a hiding place for rogues.
We have arrived at the waterways of Töölö. Töölönlahti bay draws huge waves, and far off, between the spruce woods, glistens Töölönjärvi lake. At the end of the pier, a lone vagrant whistles a radio hit from years gone by: From Lake Töölö to Finland Station.
The capital’s shoreline is long and maze-like, and as the weather is often grey and foggy, the shoreline’s coves and hundreds of islets are popular hiding places for adventurers who either want to sneak off with a lover, away from inquisitive eyes, or sail offshore to fetch some spirits from German boats, poured directly into waiting canisters, hip flasks and canteens.
If we step forwards slightly in time, you will find your feet dry once again, as Kluuvinlahti bay was filled in to become a rail yard in the 1860s as the tsar wanted a rail connection from Helsinki to St Petersburg. The swimming spot was sacrificed as trains are important in both the ordinary world and the Republic of EGS.
The train adventures around Europe spread mysterious art and the ideal of eternal youth.
The railway opened the capital up to the world in a whole new way. While rails have always been used to transport products of industry, riches and people, they have also been conduits for thoughts and alternative world views, and even revolutions.
In 1917, Vladimir Lenin made his historic journey from exile in Switzerland to St Petersburg through Germany, Sweden, and the Grand Duchy of Finland. He arrived at St Petersburg’s Finland Station on 16 April 1917, and in October of the same year he led the Bolshevik Revolution.
The Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant made reference to this journey in the band’s 1984 song West End Girls with the line “From Lake Geneva to the Finland Station”.
Railways have a long tradition as a vehicle for art and propaganda. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, agitprop trains were used in the Soviet Union, painted by avant-garde artists such as Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky. They were like moving museums, housing theatres, galleries, printing presses and propaganda hubs, and were used to agitate and spread propaganda in favour of a new kind of state.
Since then there have been all kinds of political and artistic trains, and they still travel the tracks of the Republic of EGS. From platform three a New York subway train is about to depart, its sides painted in traditional whole car style, while at platform five, the Rauhanjuna, or Peace Train, has just arrived, which in the ordinary world last ran in 1982, when a group of famous musicians, actors and artists travelled around spreading the ideals of peace and a Nordic region free of nuclear weapons.
If you have an Interrail ticket in your pocket you can join EGS and other graffiti artists on 1990s train adventures around Europe, spreading mysterious art and the ideal of eternal youth.
If you arrive here at night, you can still see the Russian passenger trains Tolstoi and Repin, as they were here at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. Staff sleep in the train carriages and there is a secretive buzz in the air as the staff trade in vodka and caviar in the shadows of the rail yard.
After dark, the rail yard is the domain of graffiti tribes. The first painted trains left from here for the Soviet Union.
After dark, the rail yard becomes the domain of graffiti tribes. Perhaps tonight too, Mer, Bang, Midas, EGS, Trama and others will be painting trains in Töölönlahti Rail Yard. A large painted piece on a Russian train is a greater accomplishment than a panel on a local commuter train. A painted Russian train travels further than the suburban town of Riihimäki: the pieces will cross into Russia at the border town of Vainikkala and continue on to Leningrad. On their first journeys they were likely the first painted trains to roll through the Soviet Union and Russia.
These painted trains have also connected the Republic of EGS and the ordinary world at pivotal moments. In August 1991, a dramatic attempted coup took place in the USSR. Traditionalist communists tried to oust President Mikhail Gorbachev, a reformist, isolating him at his dacha on the Crimean Peninsula. Ultimately, the coup was thwarted by Boris Yeltsin. In an iconic photo, Yeltsin is stood atop a tank in Moscow, declaring resistance to the coup.
The Republic of EGS also sent a colourful and radical message to the power duo across the eastern border, when Midas and Rig painted Gorbachev and Yeltsin graffiti on the side of the Repin train. This unofficial congratulatory telegram on the defeat of the coup rolled from the shores of Töölönlahti straight into Leningrad’s Finland Station.
In the capital of EGS, these trains still roll just as surely as the waves lap the shores of Töölö.
The republic opens up layers of time
In the Republic of EGS, you can move with ease through lost landscapes, spend time in demolished factories, visit submerged islands, and swim in dried up lakes and bays. In the republic, Töölönlahti is simultaneously home to the old rail yard, blazing warehouses, Oodi Library, the music venue Musiikkitalo, and the waterway, which extends almost as far as Esplanadi park, and into which Töölönjärvi also flows. Artists can be spotted here skinny-dipping in the summer and in ice holes on winter mornings.
Continue your journey, three letters are already glowing on the horizon.
Ase, Mer and EGS, Helsinki 1991.