As part of Southnord Artfest 2026, a travelling danfo bus is making its way north from Berlin, through Copenhagen and Stockholm, before it continues on to Helsinki. This bus forms a part of an installation by artist Emeka Ogboh for the Artfest’s headline exhibition The Other Side of the Mountain at Amos Rex.

Emeka Ogboh’s Transmissions begins with a simple, potent gesture: a Lagos danfo bus travels the open roads of Northern Europe, moving slowly from Berlin to Helsinki. This becomes a device for rethinking migration, not as mere movement, but as a web of relations. The danfo asks how people, memories, and cultures circulate, accumulate, and mutate across distance. Rather than framing Lagos as a point of departure, the work uses the bus as an instrument to listen to the complex constellations of diasporic life within the specific social landscapes of the Nordic region. It is more than a symbol of origin; it is a vessel for encounter. As it moves northward, the bus acts as a roaming sensor, absorbing layered voices often absent from official narratives: from diaspora communities and migrants to students and local residents whose own lives are shaped by mobility.

In each city, the danfo transforms public space into an ephemeral zone of gathering. Activated as a sound system by DJs from African diaspora networks and allied communities, it draws people through rhythm, curiosity, and recognition. These temporary assemblies-part dance, part conversation, part collective witnessing-become brief, shared futures.