The voice as a space of publication in itself.
"I am insisting on the voice as carrier of knowledge, a vessel that gives form to ideas, as a marker of spaces, the voice as container and content, the voice as space of resistance, insistence, and as a space for various propositions and dispositions."
—Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
Borrowing its title from Forough Farrokhzad's poem Only Voice Remains, Voice Seeping into Time asserts the power of the voice to claim not only space but also time. Through a selection of speeches held over the first two years as director and chief curator of Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) between March 2023 and April 2025, this volume expands Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung's notion of the voice as a space of publication in itself. With each articulation delivered by a single voice but funnelling the echoes of many, Voice Seeping Into Time explores the programmatic lines shaping HKW's institutional embrace of the plurality of cultures, epistemologies, sociopolitics, spiritualities, and ways of being in the world.
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (born 1977 in Yaoundé, Cameroon, lives and
works in Berlin) is a curator, art critic, author and
biotechnologist. He is founder of SAVVY Contemporary
Berlin and of
SAVVY Journal for critical texts
on contemporary
African
art. He was associate professor at Muthesius University Kiel, and guest professor in curatorial studies at the Städelschule in
Frankfurt. He was curator-at-large for documenta 14, and was a guest
curator of the 2018 Dak'Art Biennale in Senegal. As part of the
Miracle
Workers Collective, he curated the Finnish Pavilion at the Venice
Biennale in 2019. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is the director of Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin since 2023.