Robert Machiri, also known as Chi, is an artist and musician whose practice is rooted in sonic inquiry, underscoring sounding as a critical mode of observation. His work takes a speculative and improvisational form, producing plural outputs that include mark-making, moving and still images, environmental recordings, decompositions, installations and social intervention.
Robert ist part of the exhibition and festival Every Artist Must Take Sides – Resonances of Eslanda and Paul Robeson at the Akademie der Künste on Saturday, 24.1.2026.
His practice is approached through methodologies of curiosity and errantry, both of which operate as instruments within a broader new media framework where geographical disposition-spatial studies- is used to regurgitate history, reify memory and reproduce the archive.
Questions and Answers
3 FACTS
Darkness is simply the absence of light
We need each other
Climate change is real
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
This idea that, right there in doing music there is an immediate access, a portal to all the critical aspects of our human existence; breath, emotion, instrumentation(the technology/body and material), the spiritual and the intellectual.
And how our bodies are positioned in this process.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
Somewhere in my childhood. I developed an interest in things about sound very early in my life.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
Chimurenga Rebel Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited
Voodoo D’Angelo
The Guide (Wommat) Youssou N’Dour
Big fun Miles Davis
Chapungu Mazai mbira Group
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Complicated politics, joy and the best bars and concert venues.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
Betreace, south of Harare in Zimbabwe and Brixton, Johannesburg
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Listen to something else.
7. What was the last record/music you bought or listened to?
The Morden sound of Harare townships 1975-1980, Roots rocking Zimbabwe
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Tyshawn Sorey
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
Biennale Musica 2023
10. How important is technology to your creative process? Very important as it expands possibilities both technically and conceptually
11. What can people expect from your concert here in Berlin?
Liberation
