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]