Sound as a technology, as a physical phenomenon – acoustic pressure, that affects the body before it becomes music.
From 11 to 15 November, Tarkastamo, Oulu’s Market Hall, City Library, Cathedral, Intiö Water Tower and Aalto Siilo are united by the first edition of TAR, returning sound back to its materiality, offering a different way of listening to and tuning with the world.
The festival opens with a commission for 24 subwoofers by low-frequency artist Stefanie Egedy. Extremely low bass and infra-sound materialized in the newly built event venue Tarkastamo, the main arena of TAR.
Beyond the music, the programme features a discourse series at the City Library accompanied by a small selection of curated films including the premiere of a documentary by Cedrik Fermont (Syrphe), drawing on decades of traveling and interviews with figures from the global sonic underground.

The rest of the now announced line-up include Mark Fell, Rian Treanor, Sofia Jernberg, Heinali & Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko, Nerve, Michaela Turcerová, Lucio Capece, Perera Elsewhere, Mary C, María Gabriela Rubio Hernández, and Oulu-based Transistori.
The TAR festival is finding its home in Oulu, a city that never served as a centre but always as a gate – whether to the north and Arctic or to the vulnerable ecosystem of the boreal forest – the festival speaks from a peripheral position: between the known and the open, between the industrial and the primal.

The event is curated by the artistic director duo AGF and Vladislav Delay, aka Antye Greie-Ripatti and Sasu Ripatti. TAR Festival is part of the Lumo Art & Tech festival and the Oulu2026 European Capital of Culture program.

The full schedule and program will be published in August.

TAR invites the international community during the dark time of the year to witness artistic proposals from sonic and geographic peripheries presented in resonant spaces around the city.

More info here.