The TAR Symposium will take place at the Oulu City Library from 11 to 15 November 2026. The programme is centred on three themes: commons, periphery and vibration.
Commons are ordinary: air, water, berries and social spaces. Yet as competition for resources intensifies, whether over land, minerals or media, everything is increasingly contested, monetised and appropriated as a commodity.
How can we reclaim and preserve public and counterpublic spaces, and spaces for freedom, creation and possibility?
These questions are at the heart of the TAR Symposium, taking place at Oulu City Library from 11 to 13 November 2026. The international symposium brings together artists, musicians and cultural practitioners from around the world to discuss the future of music and sound and present independent cultural networks.
The programme is centred on three themes: commons, periphery and vibration. It focuses on the economy of music and sound in our contested times. What futures are possible? What are the commons in music and sound? How do peripheral perspectives become audible and important? How does sound leak into bodies and societies? And how can we work under conditions of systemic inequality, attention excess, algorithmic capture and an abundance of tools?
The programme introduces organisations and networks such as Synth Library Prague, The African and Asian Alternative Database, the Eastern European music platform Easterndaze, the Indian collective code.drift and Hong Kong Community Radio.
The film programme features Cedrik Fermont’s A Geography of Noise, which celebrates its world premiere in Oulu. The film explores how sound artists, improvisers, electronic and experimental musicians across Asia, Africa and Latin America create their own spaces, sounds and communities. Pavle Terzić’s Irreversible Time Fairy Tale explores the alternative club culture that emerged in Serbia during the 1990s.
On Friday 13 November, the programme focuses on music and sound education in the 21st century, exploring how sound, music and listening practices can be embedded in education and community programmes.
TAR Symposium, 11–13 November 2026, Oulu City Library. Tickets for the symposium and the whole festival are available at Lippu.fi.
Full programme: https://tar-festival.info/program/
The symposium is part of the TAR festival, curated by AGF and Vladislav Delay. The festival is organised as part of the Oulu2026 European Capital of Culture programme and Lumo Art & Tech Festival.
