Cosmogenic Transformation

This Sunday, the day of the solar eclipse and a day before the equinox – marking autumn in the Northern Hemisphere and spring in the Southern – we begin a collaboration with our dear neighbors migas, a listening bar in Berlin-Wedding. We will be re-airing a selection of their sonic programme on SAVVYZΛΛR in the months ahead. For the first transmission, part of a series on poetry and sound, curated and co-hosted by Pia Chakraverti-Würthwein, we welcome her with interdisciplinary artist and musician Tanka Fonta for a session of invocations in the form of spiritual texts, storytelling, and music that moves the soul.

Drawing from diverse spiritual and musical traditions, Tanka and Pia’s session approaches sound as both a physical phenomenon and a symbolic language that threads, interweaves, and interconnects human consciousness, cultural memory, and transcendental awakening. Musically, this session travels between the ragas and ballads of virtuosos like Zakir Hussain, Parvathy Baul, and Salif Keita, and the folk songs of traveling bards and mystics. Poetically, they share works from the Therigatha written by the first Buddhist nuns over 2000 years ago, as well as modern and contemporary poets such as Gabriel Okara and Sarojini Naidu.

Tanka Fonta is a multifaceted artist whose expansive oeuvre spans composition, visual arts, philosophy, radio production, and research. Drawing deeply from sonic practices and knowledge systems of African musical heritages and a broad spectrum of global cultural knowledge, Fonta’s compositions and visual narratives probe cosmogenic interconnectedness, sonic memory, and expanded consciousness. Living and working in Berlin, Fonta continues to push the limits of artistic exploration, seamlessly merging traditional and contemporary modes of expression.

Pia Chakraverti-Würthwein is a curator and writer based in Berlin. She previously worked at Esther Schipper as an Artist Liaison, and before that was a freelance curator on projects with Fondazione Prada, Slavs and Tatars, and SAVVY Contemporary, among others.