Sound artist Hans Rosenström has launched a site-specific sound installation titled "Out of Silence" at Four Freedoms Park on New York City's Roosevelt Island, running until 21 June. The multi-speaker work features layered voices sung by the Estonian choir Vox Clamantis, arranged across four sections of the park as an homage to Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1941 Four Freedoms speech. Rosenström, a Finnish artist based in Stockholm, developed the project during an International Studio & Curatorial Program residency in New York in 2024, after being approached by Latvian curator Alina Girshovich to mark the 90th birthday of composer Arvo Pärt. The park's memorial to FDR was designed by architect Louis Kahn, who was born in Estonia and benefited from New Deal programs.
This project matters because it transforms a historic political speech into a sensory, non-patriotic meditation on the act of speech itself, using the human voice as a medium to shape public space. The installation gains heightened relevance amid current global conflicts, underscoring Roosevelt's warnings about freedom of speech and worship. It also highlights Rosenström's rare US exhibition, bringing his Nordic sound-sculpting practice—previously seen at the Helsinki Biennial—to an American audience, while connecting Estonian cultural figures (Kahn, Pärt, Vox Clamantis) through a shared sonic and architectural legacy.