Oscar Ngu
Atanga
Artist, Researcher, Farmer
Photograph by Ibra Wane, at Trames, Dakar, 2025
Oscar Ngu Atanga is a Cameroonian British artist, composer, researcher and farmer whose practice explores the relationships between land, sound, material, memory and continuity. Through live performance, composition, field recording, installation, moving image and artistic research, he creates immersive works that draw on ecological knowledge, cultural memory and spatial listening.
Rooted in long-term research across West Africa and Europe, his practice moves fluidly between performance, objects and environments, approaching sound and material as interconnected ways of understanding place. He is the founder of Taneka Studio, a research and design practice grounded in sound, textile, spatial and agricultural experimentation.
Working between Berlin, Cotonou and Dakar.
WAX ECHOES: UNWRITTEN NOTESHaus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin
Multichannel spatial sound and material installation, 2026
Photograph by Madakya, HKW, Berlin, 2026
Photograph by Eglė Ščiukaitė , HKW, Berlin, 2026
Photograph by Eglė Ščiukaitė , HKW, Berlin, 2026
Photograph by Madakya, HKW, Berlin, 2026
Created for The Tirailleurs: Trials and Tribulations at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Wax Echoes:
Unwritten Notes combines archival research, field recordings and spatial sound to explore overlooked histories of colonial military service and resistance.
The installation creates a layered listening environment where sound becomes a means of encountering memory, absence and historical continuity.
Materials and technical elements: Multichannel audio, field recordings, electronic composition, multilingual spoken text and suspended textile-covered loudspeakers. Variable dimensions.
HELIX Centro Cultural Franco-Moçambicano, Maputo
Durational spatial sound composition, 2026
Commissioned for Dilayla Romeo’s exhibition ESPIR(ITU)AL: Ciclos de Transformação Infinita, Helix is a durational sound composition developed from field recordings, environmental sound and electronic textures.
Distributed throughout the exhibition space, the work does not accompany a single object or image. Instead, it forms a changing sonic layer across the wider installation, connecting its different visual and material elements through listening. The composition explores ancestry, ecology and transformation through repetition, accumulation and gradual shifts in texture.
Materials and technical elements: Field recordings, environmental sound, electronic composition and audio playback throughout the exhibition.
Photographs: Dilayla Romeo.
POINTS OF ENTRYGalerie Wedding, Berlin
Site-responsive spatial sound installation and public programme, 2024
Photographs by Galerie Wedding.
Developed in dialogue with Raquel van Haver’s exhibition The Grid, Points of Entry examined the sonic geographies of Berlin’s Wedding district through field recordings, electronic composition and public programming.
The work considered listening as a point of encounter between migration, labour, public space and collective memory. Sound and public gathering operated as connected parts of the project, allowing the installation to extend beyond playback into conversation, shared listening and exchange.
Materials and technical elements: Field recordings, electronic composition, site-responsive spatial audio and public listening programme.
Live Performances
Photograph by Rahema Z, at 90 mil Berlin, 2026
Photograph by Thabo Thindi, Black Communion, at Morphine Raum Berlin, 2026
Photograph by Jean Baptiste Joire, at Sonic Commons Dakar, 2025
Photograph by Madakya, at Atemporal Projects Berlin, 2026
Atanga’s live performances are an evolving experimental practice centred on immersive sound and deep listening. Electric guitar, electronics, synthesisers, field recordings and live sampling come together in a sound that moves between intimacy and intensity. Shaped through improvisation rather than fixed arrangements, each set finds its flow in response to the space and the moment.
Photograph by Jean Baptiste Joire, at Sonic Commons Dakar, 2025
His guitar playing draws on the emotional directness and expressive weight of the blues. Slide guitar and sustained tones meet layered textures, fractured rhythms and deep low frequencies, creating a hybrid language in which raw expression and sonic experimentation are inseparable. Each performance becomes its own environment: a place to slow down, listen closely and be drawn further into sound and feeling.
THE RETURNShort Film, Benin, 2026
Photographs by Oscar Ngu Atanga, Benin, 2026
The Return introduces Taneka Studio through landscapes, craft processes and everyday life across Benin. Rather than functioning as documentation, the film explores relationships between research, design, landscape and material culture, extending my wider installation practice into moving image.
Photograph by Oscar Ngu Atanga, Senegal, 2025
RadioOscar Ngu Atanga became a resident at Berlin’s Refuge Worldwide in 2021. Since then, he has developed two main shows: Sequences, which leaned towards club music and made space for guests to play collaboratively, and Frequency Shift, a more experimental programme moving between electronic music, field recordings and wider listening.
Photograph by Refuge Worldwide, Berlin, 2022
His approach to broadcasting is guided by texture, feeling and movement. He is drawn to music that can hold attention through its atmosphere, detail and feeling. A mix becomes a way to build a journey: connecting sounds across styles and eras, letting rhythms and moods shift, and leaving room for unexpected encounters.
Drawing by Yasemin Tekgürler
For Atanga, radio is a space for exchange as much as selection—a way to listen together, share discoveries and let music travel beyond the dancefloor. A selection of mixes is available here; many more can be heard on his Refuge Worldwide archive. He has also contributed guest mixes to Cashmere Radio, THF, Foundation FM and Kiosk Radio, among others.
His wider DJ practice has taken him to events and venues such as Berlin’s CTM Festival and Tresor, London’s Corsica Studios and Colour Factory, C12 in Brussels, Ankali in Prague and Arroz Estúdios in Lisbon, among others.
Atanga is also a member of African Acid Is the Future, a Berlin-based music platform, record label, event series and multidisciplinary artist collective founded in 2014 by DJ, producer and curator Maryisonacid.
Selected Exhibitions, Performances and Events
2026
Wax Echoes: Unwritten Notes — Installation commissioned by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) for Tirailleurs: Trials and Tribulations. From Cannon Fodder to Avant-Garde—The Forgotten Soldiers Who Freed Europe, Berlin, Germany.
Helix — Durational spatial sound composition commissioned for Dilayla Romeo’s exhibition ESPIR(ITU)AL: Ciclos de Transformação Infinita, Centro Cultural Franco-Moçambicano, Maputo, Mozambique.
Short Theatre Festival — Live durational performance, Orto Botanico di Roma, Rome, Italy.
Reprise — Live performance, Atemporal Projects, Berlin, Germany.
Black Communion — Live performance, Morphine Raum, Berlin, Germany.
African Acid Is the Future — Live DJ set, 90mil, Berlin, Germany.
Prototypes — Live A/V performance at Is That All There Is? Festival (Part 2), 90mil, Berlin, Germany.
Artist Residency — Centre Culturel Le Château, Saint-Louis, Senegal.
2025
Prototypes — Live A/V performance, Studio DB, Berlin, Germany.
Sonic Commons: Prototypes — Live A/V performance at Partcours ’25, Dakar, Senegal.
Resonant Grounds — Field-recording and composition workshop in partnership with Ableton and the Goethe-Institut, Partcours ’25, Dakar, Senegal.
Trames — Live DJ set, Dakar, Senegal.
Artist Residency — Goethe-Institut Senegal, Dakar.
SAVVY Contemporary — Live DJ set for the institution’s 15th anniversary, Berlin, Germany.
Nyege Nyege 10th Anniversary — Globus at Tresor, Berlin, Germany.
Return to Source — Listening session and A/V talk, Humboldt Forum, Berlin, Germany.
Selected Publication
“Sonic Reconstruction” — Afrikada Magazine, 2025.