It is language that emancipates and connects us, that generates imagination and gives us strength and support. But what makes us strong also makes us vulnerable. After all, everything of value is defenseless. What if language is forbidden to us, our books are burned, and people are silenced; what if voices are imprisoned? What if ‘Our languages are under arrest’?

We discuss the creative and destructive dimension of language, of that which allows us to administer stories and meaning to the world. The language that connects the past and the future, continuing on the dike of our wonderfully divided present.

Five artists provide an intimate insight into the global tension between the power and vulnerability of language, not through an abstract lecture, but by (re)writing, singing, or composing an existential reality. Five linguistic domains, five stories of resistance, creativity, and endurance. Five stories, in short, that affirm and perpetuate the power of our languages, despite or perhaps even through oppression.