During 2018 the Student Union is celebrating the Year of Art. To celebrate, we give voice to several creative individuals or groups acting in the Aalto community. During May, the women’s choir KYN has the floor.

Kuva: Maarit Kytöharju

KYN (abbreviated for Kauppakorkeakoulun Ylioppilaskunnan Naislaulajat, the Business School Student Union women singers) is a world-class choir composed of women. Helsingin Sanomat has accoladed it as” one of the brightest stars in the sky that is the Finnish choir sky”, a” trailblazer of jazz music” and” the most surprising composition of the musical year”. For 2017, KYN has won both a Grand Prix victory and a special award for amazing stage performance in Berlin, ranking as 6th best women’s choir in the world, and being chosen as Choir of the Year.

KYN is ambitious and bold, breaking boundaries and constantly developing choir music. It has created a unique and distinctive program and a whole new genre of choir music; ethnic jazz. It combines traditional melodious themes and texts of Finland with jazz rhythm and harmony.

To its members, KYN is also a family.

In addition to AYY members, women of different ages and fields of expertise sing in KYN, brought together by their love for choir music.

When KYN was chosen Choir of the Year in 2017, the grounds for the choice stated that KYN was a group of singers devoted to female choir music. It is true! Choir is life for us. Us KYN women devote ourselves into the choir for a long time, take a professional, passionate outlook on our hobby and strive to develop as singers. And of course, we aim to develop the choir further. (If you feel the same way, you might be a future KYN woman in the making).

We create music because not doing it would be incomprehensible to us. Creating music in a choir is inspired by the fact that a choir is an instrument played by its leader, where every single singer is a key or a string of the instrument. As a vocalist in a choir you get to be a part in the machine, a piece of the instrument. The feeling created by 40 women breathing, feeling and dreaming together is hard to experience anywhere else.

Another inspiring touch is the connection the singers have with the audience. Each time we sing we wish to convey an amazing experience. We’ve noticed that it is possible to truly touch a person and tell a story through choir music, even across language barriers and cultural borders. When KYN sung in Finnish during the competition in Italy, the judges declared that” they understood nothing, but understood everything”.

There are several reasons why making music in KYN inspires. To me, one of them is creating it with some of the best musicians in Finland. During my own choir career, I’ve had the privilege of performing with such professionals as Soile Isokoski, Johanna Försti and Jukka Perko.

At its very best choir music can speak to its audience, touching and affecting in several ways, crossing both thought and sense. Through it you can experience, see and understand things with more depth and detail. Art can momentarily open your experiences and understanding of all that our human life entails, in all situations in everyday life.

” Choir music is an art form, given voice by many individuals. It is powerful, alive, developing and forever renewing itself; it does not stop. A piece is new every time it is performed”, our artistic leader Kaija Viitasalo says.

Check out the video below and come to KYN concerts to experience our art!

Susanna Kantelinen
KYN Producer

P.S. Upcoming concerts:

• Sunday 3rd of June at 18:00, VocalEspoo festival opening concert, Espoo culture center, Tapiola hall
• Wednesday 6th of June at 19:00, Juurilla – ” KYN & Juurakko”, Espoo culture center, Tapiola hall

The Secretary General of the Student Union, Niko Ferm, visited Lisbon and was inspired by the local architecture. Could Otaniemi take pointers from Portuguese city design?

I’ve visited several campuses in the Nordics, elsewhere in Europe, China and America during the last few years. I can proudly state that the Otaniemi campus truly is world-class when it comes to real estate development and learning facilities.

Still, even when our campus is unique on the Finnish scale, it still feels that especially for a campus environment of architecture and art, the spaces around Otaniemi are somewhat hollow.

I’ve oft thought about the issue, for example during my trips to the Tsinghua and Tonji University campuses in China. Now I found myself musing on the same thing during my visit to beautiful Lisbon.

I think the development of the outdoor facilities and venues of our campus should focus on creativity, well-being and sustainability. I’ll share some of my thoughts on the ideas I came up with in Lisbon. The pictures mingled with the text are not meant to be copy-paste ideas on how to do things in Otaniemi, but rather depict what sparked the idea in the first place. The pictures are not from the campus areas.

Outdoor sport opportunities

Otaniemi has a good jogging path, though winter jogging is being hampered by a lack of proper lighting. Last year some outdoor training equipment poles were installed near Dipoli and the sports pitch. For a moment I felt I was satisfied with the situation.

In Lisbon, however, I noticed that each park had some sort of pole, training machine based on your own weight, or instruction board for other types of sports.

A training machine with its instructions

I also mused whether a climbing wall or a piece of art could be created on the campus. If we could have something like this installed, I believe it could be maintained by Oranki ry, operating in AYY’s sphere of influence.

Climbing meets art

Nature and pathways

There’s a lot of woods in Otaniemi, but the number of forest paths is still very small. The picture below is taken from a well-maintained garden, but something similar could easily be imagined in Otaniemi.

A path in forest

Otaniemi also lacks stairs, mostly due to the lack of steep inclines. There are places, however, where stairs could be built. I don’t know if I would plant trees on the stairs like in the picture, but I believe some stairs could spruce up the look of the campus and offer places to hang out from time to time. At the same time, we need to ensure that biking on campus continues to be easy.

A tree on stairs

Street art

Wall art, murals and art that is nicer than just spray-painted tags and squiggles; these are examples of art that we could use in Otaniemi to beautify the walls, trash cans, poles and so on.

Lisbon is filled to bursting with various kinds of paintings and graffiti. The piece in the picture below might be a bit on the crumbling side, but it tells an intensive story of the dreams and hopes of local citizens.

Street art

If you’re interested in fado, you can read more on it here.

The student union’s history as a comic

If the issue of painting the pathway tunnel next to Täffä would not cause so much controversy, I’d suggest that it be painted with a comic book style mural resembling the one in the picture below, depicting the Student Union’s history.

Thus, I propose we paint a mural like that on the wall on the side of the current AYY central office. The fact that the building was designed by Alvar Aalto might cause a few problems, though…

Street art in comic form

Pond and cafe

The Ossinlampi pond sees several swimmers each year. There is also a garden and a skate ramp with barbequing options. The plant life of the pond hardly beautifies the area, though.

The pond area has enormous potential. At the Tonji campus the students built a walking bridge across their pond as a school project, with a lounging area in the middle of the bridge.

A bridge over a pond

Walkways

A staple of Lisbon are cobbled pathways formed from very small stones which form various kinds of patterns. The patterns all have a story of some sort. For example, the wave patterns of Rossio square serve as a reminder of the tsunami that came after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.

The special things on the streets could be something else entirely, too. For example, in Lappeenranta the organizations in the local student union paint their logos on the asphalt each year.

Portuguese pavement or calçada portuguesa

Pavilion, summer platform

Otaniemi lacks a summer stage in for organizing concerts and events during the warm days of summer and spring. The amphitheater of the candidate center could offer opportunities for this, but to my knowledge it only acts as the stage for the handing out ceremony of the teekkari caps during wappu.

Meeting spots should be all around campus. The users for them will find them if they exist. A good example is the mini terrace in front of the AYY office, which fills up with users during sunny days.

A pavilion

Many people might have good and working ideas of campus development in addition to these expressed in this blog. The important thing is to find the means to develop the area. The AYY campus section does a lot of work to develop the campus area each year, but I think that we could do with more partners to join in on the work.

An interesting option is to look to the Tonji university for innovative ideas. They have a yearly course project on campus development, kind of like a PdP course on the campus.

A classical option would be to set up a campus development fund which would finance groups, associations or projects that would develop our campus. Projects such as the Ossinlampi garden and the skating ramp have been created like this. These projects have been supported by the TTE fund.

Niko Ferm
Secretary General, Aalto University Student Union

P.S. I totally forgot to talk about statues! I propose we erect small statues in the same manner as Wroclaw has its dwarfs. The following people would be excellent statue candidates: Ossi Törrönen (whose memoirs you can read here in Finnish), Lord Moyne (who stirred the pot in the 90’s with his Amer sales deals), Jari Jokinen (the first employee of the Aalto University), Tuula Teeri (the first rector of the Aalto University) and of course Alvar Aalto, whose spirit and impact can be felt in every stone of the University and around campus.

Dear Aalto community,

an important topic arose into discussion during the” other emerging matters” item in the latest Aalto University Student Union meeting. The Council expressed concerns over whether or not the Aalto community is equal or not. After the Representative Council meeting, the issue was up for debate in the national media, when Helsingin Sanomat magazine wrote an article on the activities of the wappu magazine Julkku. (Read the Helsingin Sanomat articles in Finnish here and here).

The question of how the organizations in the Aalto University Student Union’s sphere of influence treat people of different genders deeply concerns the Aalto community and its values. The topic is extremely challenging and difficult, and the threshold to open one’s mouth about it is high.

We at the AYY central office have worked on the issue for several weeks, preparing a preliminary discussion for the upcoming Representative Council meeting. We’ve also discussed the topic with associations that gender their activities. The material for the preliminary discussion has been sent to each and every Representative Council group, which ensures that the next meeting, held on the 19th of April, should give us a clear direction which to follow to solve the issue.

This is a very heated topic. The best possible solution will be found through open and constructive discussion, where each of us has a voice and a chance to have it heard. Due to the importance of the topic, it is extremely crucial to undertake the discussion in the highest decision-making organ of AYY. At the Council, we should be able to find the best, sustainable solution for our community and upcoming Aalto generations.

The Council groups have received questions on how and when, in their opinion, should AYY act in the issue of associations that deal with applicants based on gender and on whether or not AYY should redefine its policies regarding equal activities in its association regulation.

The discussion on equality has been ongoing in the Aalto community for a long time. The topic has been on the agenda again and again during the new millennium. The latest large discussion took place in 2015 and resulted in a survey of equality in the AYY association sphere (you can download the survey, in Finnish and in PDF, from this link). The survey was completed at the end of 2016 and it showed the expressed wish that the Student Union should act to promote equality.

Nowadays, the gender of a person should not have any relevance to which community they can belong to. So, the time has come to discuss the issue. A solution will be found, rest assured, and the first step towards it is the Representative Council meeting held on Thursday, April 19th.

Everyone wishes for a safer and better community for all of us, so let us undertake this discussion fairly and with respect to one another. I trust us all being capable of that.

Noora Vänttinen
Chair of the Board, Aalto University Student Union

The Student Union is celebrating the Year of Art in 2018. To celebrate, we will shine light on creative individuals and groups working in our community. First in line to give insight to their activities and art is the Teekkarispeksi.

Photo: Atte Makkonen

The Speksi is a musical made by students. It’s not your run of the mill theater, but rather separated from it through improv.

When the audience yells ”omstart”, the actors improvise the scene again, inventing some new elements to it. The dancers, orchestra and technical staff also take part in the improv. Entire extravagant songs might be born before the eyes of the audience, and no two shows are alike. The audience can affect the ebbs and flows of the performance.

The Teekkarispeksi is made by the Otaniemi student community, but it also includes many students from outside the technical fields of study. This spring the unveiled speksi, the 29th of its kind, is called Hurma (Rapture). This year’s speksi is indeed rapturous.

Hurma is set in 1914 France, in the Belfort school, where Anna and her classmates are getting ready for the graduation ball. Love happens, twisting and tangling things, and the night does not go as planned. Who ends up with who, and what will happen at the ball? Find out by coming to the Teekkarispeksi at the Aleksanteri theater. The viewings will continue until the 23rd of April.

In the Speksi the actors, dancers, orchestra, technical staff, props, make-up, dress and other staff work intensely together. The speksi is a piece that requires a lot of work, and the staff truly makes the effort. In the fall the script writer starts with the story, and after the turn of the year the other groups can really dig into the work.

It’s awesome to see how the work of each production member starts to show and how the speksi comes together. When everyone works together, the product really shines.

Each production member has joined the speksi due to their own enthusiasm, and each wishes to use their time to make a great production. The members attend school and work in addition to participating, so the evenings are taken over by training the speksi and working on your own turf.

It is amazing how devoted all production members are to the speksi and work so much to make it happen. We make the speksi because it gives us all a chance to show our own unique skills and learn many new things. Many have started their dancing or acting careers from the Teekkarispeksi.

We think that the best part about the production is how every member is encouraged to be a personal individual, and everyone is welcome to the community. One of the main rules of improv theater is that” a blunder is a gift”. By utilizing this philosophy, we dare to create art.

Teekkarispeksi is art in various ways. The different sectors use their own creativity for us to create a unified, impressive and a very visual piece.

The aim of the speksi is to inspire ideas and to challenge the viewer to participate in its creation. Art is not art without its audience. Through the interaction of the audience, the speksi truly sparks to life.

Us speksi people do the work we do not for profit, but rather to show the audience how enthusiastic we are about it. That, in short, is the rapture of the speksi.

Atte Makkonen
Teekkarispeksi social media correspondent
Hurma dancer

”What are you going to do next year?” I’m surely not the first one to be asking this. At fall time recruitments are in full swing , as clubs, subject associations, special status associations and even the student union are competing for volunteers. Last autumn, as an unforgettable yet demanding year as a chairperson was coming to an end, I stated loudly that the year to come would be ”the year 2015 of academic achievements”. One night I ran into the recently selected former of the board of AYY, who at KY’s open office (RIP <3) started challenging me to run for the board. What the heck is AYY? But, one thing led to another and now, about a year later, I’m sitting in 103T writing a blog, heart filled with love of AYY.

Even though I did my best to prepare myself for a year in our student union and its board by meeting people, listening to their experiences and wading through action reports, budgets, the representative’s council’s decisions and plans of action, I had no clue of all the things that 2015 would bring. Hundreds of new acquaintances, good friends, becoming familiar with important issues, crowning Manta (twice!), Sauli Niinistö, all-nighters, laughter – and of course also frustration. However, in the middle of this sentimental gust of nostalgia it’s good to remind oneself that there’s still eight weeks left before Christmas.

Another thing about AYY that I had heard of but had no way of truly understanding before my year here is the amount of volunteers working within AYY and especially the high level of enthusiasm, energy and good humor among them. This spirit of doing things combined with the large spectrum of volunteering possibilities has convinced me: even though next year will be the year of diligent studying, it’s more than possible for me to do things in our student union on the side.

One of the best things in AYY is the work environment, no doubt. Even though the colleagues are young and enthusiastic, there’s an incredible amount of know-how and experience to be found within both the volunteers and the employees. This is precisely why I find it difficult to come up with a voluntary job which would be impossible for anyone to manage – you learn by doing and at AYY you get to learn from the best. The huge expertise is luckily mixed with a decent dose of student spirit, so you don’t have to be worried about the atmosphere being too uptight.

Deadlines for applications are closing one by one, the application for HOAS organs being the first on 8^th of November. Before you make your decision, you can get to know the opportunities to experience and grow AYY provides. You can do it by visiting ayy.fi/stop/en or participating the Recruitment Night at Elisa Living room on 10^th of November, where you get to hear the volunteers’ own experiences.

What are you going to do next year? Whatever you do, do it to the fullest. I know I will, as a volunteer at AYY.

– Rosa

Matkani on päättynyt! Pääsin juhlallisten menojen ja mahtavan meiningin saattelemana vihdoin Kauppatorille ja minut painettiin Havis Amandan Pronssikutrelle tuhansien ja taas tuhansien ihmisten läsnäollessa. KIITOS kaikille! Ja HYVÄÄ WAPPUA!

Terveisin,

Mantan Lakki

Enää kaksi päivää h-hetkeen!

Wappukulkueen lakanat valmistuivat minun tarkassa valvonnassa.

Nyt alkaa meikälakkia ihan tosissaan jo jännittää! Kiertueeni on kuulemma herättänyt kiinnostusta ihan valtamediassa asti, ja vaikka olenkin aika tottunut kaikenlaiseen julkisuuteen, ihan tätä en sentään osannut

odottaa. Onneksi tänään oli aikataulussani taas vähän rauhallisempi ja epämuodollisempi päivä.

Aloitin aamuni valvomalla Wappukulkueen ja lakitusspektaakkelin valmistelua, ja pakko sanoa että aika huikea show on tulossa! Muistattehan kaikki tulla ihailemaan sitä ihan alusta alkaen osallistumalla Wappukulkueeseen! Pääsin itsekin spreijaamaan pari lakanaa, ja aika hienojahan niistä tuli, vaikka itse sanonkin (ja nyt Cocktailpongista hankittujen roiskeiden lisäksi kaunista pintaani saattaa koristaa muutama AYY:n värinen spraymaalitahra).

Sain kunnian tuomaroida keppihevospooloturnausta aurinkoisella Alvarin aukiolla.

Päiväni jatkui aurinkoisessa säässä Sikariporras- keppihevospooloturnauksessa yhtenä arvovaltaisista tuomareista. Oli hauska katsella opiskelijoiden ilakointia lämpimässä kevätauringossa ja päästä taas poseeraamaan joukkueiden yhteiskuviin, hienoja kuvia tuli (myös siitä yhdestä, jossa kanssani poseerannut nuorimies päätyi ottamaan haalarinsa pois – toivottavasti sitä ei kuitenkaan ihan jokaiseen someen jaettu 😉 ).

Kävimme moikkaamassa NESU-KY:tä KYmppisuoran rastilla

Iltani kruunasi vierailu KYmpin Kymppisuoralla, jossa pidin rastia ystävieni aavalaisten kanssa. Ilta-aurinko paistoi Töölönlahdelle ja Kymppisuoran kiertelijät olivat niin innostuneita ottamaan kanssani kuvia että suorastaan repivät minut edellisten ryhmien käsistä. Lopulta viilennyt ilta ajoi kiertelijät kohti aamuun asti jatkuvia jatkoja, ja minut turvallisesti kotimatkalle.

Huominen vielä, ja sitten lähtee! Nyt on syytä nukkua tämä yö kunnolla, sillä ensi yönä tämä lakki tuskin paljon silmiään ummistaa. Nukkukaa tekin!

Rakkain terveisin,
Lakki