Robert Machiri

International symposium Paul Robeson — The Artist as Revolutionary With Jared Ball, Lisenne Delgado, Mohammed Elnaiem, Baruch Gottlieb, Gerald Horne, Robert Machiri, Tania Christina Monteiro, Anne Wetsi Mpoma, Shana L. Redmond, Mireille Tsheusi Robert, Louna Sbou & Sylvana Simons

ty @morphine_records_raum for beautiful show on Thursday <3 tonight, Berlin again. 21:15 — playing a duo set with @machirirobert .ᐟ weekender event by @settenagency , @jokkoo.collective . link in bio

Jokkoo x setten Weekender: Robert Machiri with a special guest YATTA (LIVE) [Robert “Chi” Machiri] Chi aka (Robert Machiri) is an artist and musician working through sonic inquiry, speculative improvisation, and new media practices. He is currently based in Berlin where he continues to live nocturnally pursuing water bodies and seismic messages. [YATTA] YATTA is a Sierra Leonean-American artist and composer working across experimental music, performance, and installation. In 2024, they released PALM WINE, an album that draws from West African palm wine guitar traditions—building on the legacy of their great uncle, pioneering Sierra Leonean guitarist S. E. Rogie—and reimagines them through ambient composition, voice, and experimental production. Themes from PALM WINE extend into YATTA’s visual work. Recent exhibitions include Iron + Palm Wine (Art Omi) and FATHAGOD.EXE (Blade Study), which examine the pastoral, Black wandering, and the afterlives of African musical lineages, alongside questions of spiritual technology, extraction, and diasporic connectivity. ———— Playing LIVE set on Sunday 19 April 18:00 - 0:00 at Secret Location near Jannowitzbrücke Tickets & weekend passes available on RA!

PUNGWE: A Sonic Performance-Lecture Robert Machiri With Special Guest Dj Lucky March 19th - 6pm  PUNGWE is a space lab for modular artist forms and an informal collective space that reproduces cooperative thinking through sound power. Active since 2014, it centers sonicities from the African continent and its migrations to mobilize action through ephemeral communal encounters. These “post-art” actions challenge how we see, think, and hear the world and its complex power relations. In this performance-lecture, Robert Machiri presents an iteration of PUNGWE rooted in his latest research on sound trailing in relation to the body and movement. Drawing from his nomadic practices across different cities, the session explores technologies of communal listening as methodologies for disrupting and repurposing archives and subjectivities. Robert Machiri is a Berlin-based sound artist whose work exists at the intersection of conviviality and art as pedagogy. As a co-founder of the duo Listening at Pungwe, he engages with social and political concerns through sonic explorations. This event is curated by Paula Nascimento in the context of the research project Venus in III Acts. In English Free entry, limited capacity 3rd floor, with stairs Supported by República Portuguesa – Cultura, Juventude e Desporto / Direção-Geral das Artes

🐚 〰️ This Sunday on our SAVVYZΛΛR radiowaves: Memory Biwa and Robert Machiri invoke sonic counter-spells in the framework of DESACTA. COUNTER-SPELLS TO UNRAVEL 140 YEARS OF THE BERLIN CONFERENCE with a compilation of 3 sound pieces: SUNBORN LULLABIES AND BATTLE CRIES is a cacophonic procession of chants: praises, battle songs, lullabies and bow-playing made by ritual facilitators and delegates in Berlin in September 2011, and archival sound recordings of a storyteller and bow-player from Okahandja, central Namibia. The chants re-enact a historical watershed of the return(s) of ancestral remains from the place that they were kept for over a century after despoliation, and in the aftermath of the Berlin-Kongo Conference. Commissioned for commissioned for Manifesta 13, 2020. 
  DREAMWAV (NYAMINYAMI TIDALECTICS) draws on Kamau Brathwaite’s tidal cosmologies or „tidalectics“, which traces the dialectics between natural and human disasters, and the dislocation of life-ways on islands, interconnected mountain tips submerged by the oceans and rivers. Along with Credo Mutwa, we listen to the disappeared presences carved into the meridians of the underground Zambesi. Commissioned for Lofoten International Art Festival, 2024. 
DZIMU/DZANGARA/DZIMU is a mashup of radio broadcasts, readings, and recordings made between Dakar, Durban, Berlin. Commissioned for the Audible Edge Festival of Sound, 2021. 🔊 SAVVYZΛΛR 🔊 RADIO 01.03.2026 16:00
SUNBORN LULLABIES AND BATTLE CRIES With @soremasores & @machirirobert → VIA our website IMAGE  Memory Biwa from Ozerandu, UNESCO World Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte, November 2024

✨ Listening at Pungwe: The Closing Jam ✨ On Friday, 3 October 2025, during @kunstavond , we concluded the pilot edition of TOOLSHED with a vibrant Pungwe Listening Jam, featuring @soremasores , @lynneedenise , @mixtapemenage , and @machirirobert . Over the past months, Listening at Pungwe, the collective founded by artist-historian Memory Biwa and music and sound researcher Robert “Chi” Machiri, was in residence at Melly as part of TOOLSHED, our new residency and research initiative. Their practice centers listening as a method of inquiry, resistance, and reimagination, engaging sound archives and collective gatherings to explore new ways of sensing and knowing together. ✨ The jam marked the culmination of their residency: an improvisational evening of sound, movement, and conversation inspired by Katherine McKittrick’s Dear Science and Other Stories. Through deep collaboration and friendship, Biwa, Machiri, Lynnée Denise, and Eiliyas created a space of resonance, a living archive of memory, rhythm, and liberation. 🌀 TOOLSHED explores the tools we use to build, question, and transform cultural institutions today. With the pilot edition now coming to a close, we extend our thanks to everyone who joined us on this journey. 💫 Stay tuned: an open call for the next edition of TOOLSHED will be announced soon, inviting new practitioners, researchers, and collectives to continue reshaping the tools of cultural practice. ✨ Up next: Kunstavond returns on Friday, 7 November! Within one block, explore four art spaces: @v2_unstable , @worm_rotterdam , @mamarotterdam , and @kunstinstituutmelly , all open and free from 18:00 to 21:00. 📸 Photography by @fentross

Come be with us at a Pungwe Listening Jam with off-cuts, spliced and diced bits, three-for-one specials, left-overs, and take-aways of Katherine McKittricks’s, ‘Dear Science and Other Stories. Spanning a decade and some of friendships, Chi, Lynnèe-Denise, Eiliyas and Memory meet once more grounded in methodologies of liberation evoking Deep Souths, Windhoek to Atlanta-LA via Harare’s all-night gatherings, breaking bread, conversations as scaffolding, looping and remixing new flows, and catching waveforms in a toolshade on a seaport fringe. Breaking bread at Casa Chris in Rotterdam-Zuid on Thursday, 2 October. And jamming at Toolshed on Friday, 3 October at 18:30 until 21:00. Toolshed is a new residency and research initiative of Kunstinstituut Melly. Launching with Pungwe Listening a collective rooted in communal listening as the inaugural collective-in-residence. Toolshed acts a site of dialogue, experimentation, and collective inquiry-where listening becomes a mode of resistance and reimagination. Poster Image: Cows under the shade of a hydro/meteor/wave-catcher at the Namib desert edge, southern Namibia. Photo and design by @machirirobert Profile pics: Eiliyas, Lynnée-Denise, Memory, and Robert. @machirirobert @lynneedenise @mixtapemenage #pungwelistening

🎧 This week at Melly: join us for Pungwe Listening Rotations, a three-day program within our TOOLSHED residency and research initiative. 🔎 About TOOLSHED TOOLSHED (17 May–21 Sept 2025) is Kunstinstituut Melly’s experimental space for reflection, discussion, and action on how we build and transform cultural institutions today. It opens up artistic research to the public, inviting collective learning and exchange. 🌍 About Listening at Pungwe Founded in 2017 by Memory Biwa and Robert Machiri, Listening at Pungwe takes its name from the Zimbabwean pungwe: all-night gatherings of music, conversation, and imagination. Their work began as jam sessions of ideas around sonic memories and southern African archives, transforming listening into a practice of inquiry, resistance, and reimagination. ✨ What are the Pungwe Listening Rotations? The Rotations consist of open sessions that draw from the call-and-response tactics of the pungwe. These Rotterdam sessions extend that lineage, offering listening as a way of accessing alternative archives: living, communal, and spiritual, beyond material taxonomy. Through experimental radio, playback, and live mixtapes, each gathering becomes a collective act of listening, exchange, and reimagination. 📅 Program 🔹 Wed 17 Sept, 15:00–18:00 → Open Radio Recording with Pungwe Listening 🔹 Thu 18 Sept, 14:00–16:00 → Open Radio Recording with @mf_andrade_ 🔹 Fri 19 Sept, 17:00–21:00 → Listening Session to the voice of Princess Magogo + Live Mixtape with Pungwe Listening & Lynnée Denise. At 18:00 a live recording of the podcast Sekai Asks will take place. Host @sekai1mak will be in conversation with Robert Machiri, reflecting on his practice and the broader experience of working as a Zimbabwean artist through music. 📍 TOOLSHED (located on the second floor of Kunstinstituut Melly) & on Pungwe Radio ✨ Free entrance: all welcome! 🔗 More information via our Linktree in bio.

Durchlüften2025 International Music Festival Week 4 -day 2 08.08.2025 DJ Set DJ CHI aka Robert Machiri (Simbabwe, Südafrika) Robert Machiri, aka CHI, is a sound artist and collector of sound-related objects. His practice exists at the intersection of two practices: curatorial concepts and a multidisciplinary production of artworks grounded in decolonial discourses. These works manifest themselves in embodied critiques, processes of learning and unlearning, and interweave sound, music, and image production. His best-known project, PUNGWE, is an interdisciplinary endeavor that explores African soundscapes and the contemporary artistic discourses and spaces associated with them. @msoundtrack @humboldtforum @machirirobert #duchlüften2025 #internationalmusicfestival #djchi #africansoundscapes #soundartists

What a day! 🌧️✨☀️ From puddle thinking to sonic explorations, thank you to everyone who joined us for the launch of besides Puleng; dontsa-ring and roving preoccupations, the new publication by Simnikiwe Buhlungu. 💛 We started with immersive listening interventions by Robert Machiri of Pungwe Listening, followed by a deep and generous conversation between Simnikiwe, Saïd Rosales, and Khwezi Gule about puddles, knowledge, and collaboration. 🫧 And then, Mama Nana Akumu Bolenge and her seven-piece band filled Melly with the rich sounds of Congolese rhumba, getting us all moving. ✨💃🏿 Missed it? The book and the limited-edition T-shirt designed by Simnikiwe are now available in our MELLY SHOP. 🛒 Grab yours via our Linktree [see link in bio] or visit us IRL.

WORK FOCUS | ROBERT MACHIRI “Pano ne apa, ´here and there’ in Shona (the Bantu language spoken in Zimbabwe and other Southern African countries), recalls the significant power of sound, silence and matter. [...] Robert Machiri (@machirirobert ) creates traces and marks presence by inventing alternative narrative frameworks. An itinerant practice, his sound creations act as a paralanguage capable of both deciphering the present and recording time. Machiri creates the archive through sound and drawing: a moving, sensory, embodied and spiritual archive; an archive of displacement produced from the artist’s body, which becomes a sensor and indexical marker. As in a logbook, the artist draws daily, in pulses. His vibratory, sonic or seismic drawings are like memory-makers, tracing in the material the furrow of the artist who passes through time. ” - Camille Lévy Sarfati — “Pano ne apa, ‘ici et là-bas’ en shona (langue bantoue parlée au Zimbabwe et dans d’autres pays d’Afrique australe), rappelle la force de signification du son, du silence, de la matière. [...] Robert Machiri crée la trace et marque la présence en inventant des cadres alternatifs de fabrication du récit. Pratique itinérante, ses créations sonores agissent comme paralangage capable à la fois de déchiffrer le présent et d’enregistrer le temps. Robert Machiri crée l’archive par le son et le dessin : une archive mouvante, sensorielle, incarnée et spirituelle ; archive du déplacement produite à partir du corps de l’artiste devenu capteur et marqueur indexical. Comme dans un journal de bord, l’artiste dessine chaque jour, par pulsation. Ses dessins vibratoires, soniques ou sismiques sont autant de faiseurs de mémoire qui retracent dans la matière le sillon de l’artiste passeur de temps. “ - Camille Lévy Sarfati — Robert Machiri Pano ne apa, the finger that points at the moon is not the moon, 2025, mixed media, drawings on paper (210x297mm) with sound — “Sympnea” Curated by Camille Lévy Sarfati Emné Nasereddine, Fatim Soumaré, Hani Zurob, Ismaïl Bahri, Kan-Si, Majd Abdel Hamid, Mélinda Fourn, Robert Machiri, Thania Petersen Until 27.09.2025 — #SelebeYoon #CamilleLevySarfati #RobertMachiri @partcours

Please join us this Sunday 27 April, for this necessary conversation and listening session. What can we learn from thinking through “intimate frictions” on the continent and in the diaspora; the stories of movement and music buried deep in our collective consciousness, that are amplified through the needle? The Library of Things We Forgot to Remember is happy to host this exciting and long overdue discussion about Zimbabwe(s) and the African diasporic presence in Johannesburg. Event time: 16:00–20:00 Listening session: 16:00–18:00 Conversation: 18:00–20:00 Light food and drinks will be provided. Donations welcomed.