Lost, Hidden, and Suppressed Voices

In this 10th edition of Explore the North Festival, we are serving you the horse’s straight from the horse’s own mouth. The festival gives a stage to lost, hidden and suppressed voices. For three days, these voices can freely reverberate what elsewhere is drowned out, replaced, paraphrased or misunderstood. 

Poets, performers and musicians from both near and far treat you to underexposed but damn urgent stories. Go ahead and download DuoLingo in advance, because our artists will conquer your eardrums in Frisian, Urdu, Kigogo, Spanish, Dutch, Catalan, Polish, English, Lithuanian, Farsi and more. Listen to voices in mother tongues without a motherland. Rave in all colors, dance the dead to life and feel how language can either be a prison – or a liberation. Tilt your perspective with voices without language. Do a somersault. And don’t forget to raise a toast with your friends (and with those not there). 

There’s always someone, somewhere with something wonderful to say that we don’t hear — or see.  It’s like what Persian poet Rumi said:

”Everyone looks where you look, but can everyone see what you see? The only difference between looking and seeing — is you.”