Due to airport security strikes in Germany, our guest lecturer Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is unable to join us in person this Wednesday. Because the nature of his presentation is reliant on live audience engagement, a virtual option for this program is not available. We apologize for any difficulties this may cause.
SAVVY Contemporary – The Laboratory of Form-Ideas constitutes today a living example of the disruption of dominating traditional infrastructures when it comes to artistic practices. Acting from Berlin, Dr Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and his team have in many ways been successful in creating a pocket of resistance, a breathing space, for communities from around the world. The notion, conception and formation of ‘publics’ has been core to the work of SAVVY for decades and will be the central element for this convocation.
Artist Bio
Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (born in 1977 in Yaoundé, Cameroon) is an independent curator, author and biotechnologist. He is founder and artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin and is the artistic director of Sonsbeek20–24, a quadrennial contemporary art exhibition in Arnhem, the Netherlands. He is artistic director of the 13th Bamako Encounters 2022, a biennale for African photography in Mali. Ndikung was the curator-at-large for Adam Szymczyk’s Documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany in 2017; a guest curator of the Dak’Art biennale in Dakar, Senegal in 2018; as well as artistic director of the 12th Bamako Encounters in 2019. Together with the Miracle Workers Collective, he curated the Finland Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019. He was a recipient of the first OCAD University International Curators Residency fellowship in Toronto in 2020 and is currently a professor in the Spatial Strategies MA program at the Weissensee Academy of Art in Berlin. From 2023 he will take on the role of Director at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin.
Support
Programming support for RAW Académie Session 9: Infrastructure is provided by the Sachs Contemporary Art Fund and the Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation.
Programming at ICA is made possible in part by the Emily and Jerry Spiegel Fund to Support Contemporary Culture and Visual Arts and the Lise Spiegel Wilks and Jeffrey Wilks Family Foundation. Public and Student Engagement at ICA is supported by the Bernstein Public Engagement Fund, Suzanne Weiss Doft & Jacob W. Doft, Hilarie L. & Mitchell Morgan, the Nash Family Foundation, and by Dana McDonald Strong & Mark W. Strong.