Albany 2026: Finnish Ambassador Arto Haapea and Kari Kola reflect on green glow of Lighting The Sound

After months of planning, consultations, and travel from the other end of the world, a renowned Finnish light artist behind a world-record attempt says he is honoured to “create beautiful things”.

“I feel good,” Kari Kola said on Saturday, the second night of Albany’s Lighting The Sound event.

“Yesterday, I was watching the crowds, and it was nice that people are calming down, slowing down, enjoying art, and just be present.

“It’s a very meditative experience that I tried to also achieve, and seems that it works.”

He said while the lead-up to the Albany 2026 event’s nine-day run was “very intense” and full of long days, he wasn’t stressed about his Australian debut, which, in typical Albany fashion, was met with a spell of cloudy, rainy days.

“We have a very good team, very good local production, so it went very smoothly, and the show changes quite a bit,” Kola said.

“So if we have low clouds, it’s going to reflect more the dynamics is coming through nature, and if we don’t have any clouds, this will be visible from 50km away.

“There are a million different angles where you can observe this experience, and it’s never the same.”

Nature will do most of the work actually, so I just need to light it up.

Kola was joined by a strong Finnish delegation for the first weekend of the event, including representatives from his home city of Joensuu and the Finnish Ambassador to Australia, Arto Haapea.

Mr Haapea said he had seen Kola’s work on a smaller scale at home in Finland but nothing to the scale of the 15km long Lighting The Sound installation, which he compared to the aurora borealis.

“I like this ambition that now this is the scale, and you can only go bigger from here,” he said.

“This is a proper Finnish attitude. We punch above our weight.”

He said the event was a jewel in the crown of the rich history of cultural exchange between Australia and Finland.

“The way that this project has been carried with listening to the traditional owners of the land, that speaks volumes to us as Finns, because we have our own proud Indigenous culture, the Sami people,” Mr Haapea said.

“And, of course, in Australia, you have so many Indigenous peoples, and the sort of respect that this project is able to show is just stunning, beautiful, incredible.”

Kola hinted at the prospect of a sequel event for Perth’s bicentenary in 2029.

“We need to create beautiful things in these kind of times,” he said.