Savvy Contemporary |
The laboratory of form-ideas

is an artistic organisation, discursive platform, place for good talks, foods and drinks – a space for conviviality and cultural plurilog. As a public and independent organism in perpetual becoming, it is animated by around 25 members and a network of collaborators, co-creating community and communities it breathes with. SAVVY Contemporary situates itself at the threshold of the West and the non-West to understand their conceptualisations, ethical systems, achievements, and ruins. It develops tools, proposes perspectives and nourishes practices towards imagining a world inhabited together. 

SAVVY Contemporary composes life-worlds through its commitments to exhibition-making, research, sonic and visual cultures, embodied knowledges, and other heritages of creativity. It is home to a participatory archive on German colonial history, a documentation center of performance arts, a library, a residency program, a series of SAVVY books, the record label SAVVY records, a radio platform called SAVVYZΛΛR as well as educational projects with schools. The art space engages with various publics facilitating translation and mediation of discourses, socio-political realities and difficult histories.

The space was founded in 2009 in Berlin-Neukölln by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, SAVVY’s artistic director until 2022. From 2023 to 2025, the space – located in Berlin-Wedding since 2016 –  was under artistic direction by Renan Laru-an. Currently, SAVVY is under executive direction by Lema Sikod and Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock.

Read here the concept by Renan Laru-an. 

Read here an earlier concept by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung [2017]

SAVVY Contemporary works independently of commercial interests. Structurally, we are partially funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. Additionally, the structure and programme are financed by public funding and private sponsorship as well as donations and contributions by SAVVY friends e.V.