Akeelah Bertram: soul technologies and prophetic dreams
The second episode of LEAP Lab’s 'Un/knowing' podcast was recorded last October at the end of guest Akeelah Bertram’s tenure as the Cavendish Art Science Fellow 2024-25. We had a meandering conversation walking around Girton College, touching on consciousness, water, dreams, and visions… continuing our earlier discussions on the Cambridge Physics department podcast (Ep 38 — link below) into the realm of the unknown and unexplained.
Akeelah is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice sits at the intersection of immersive installation, sound, technology, and spiritual inquiry. Through works like the forthcoming 1000 MOONS, she creates experiences that investigate what she terms as ‘Sacred Architecture’—spaces shaped by emotional and spiritual resonance rather than physical structure alone.
Central to her practice is Sonic Ceremony, a methodology drawing from congregational vocal traditions that explores how collective sound-making creates containers for witness, transformation, and communal knowing.
During her time as the Cavendish Art Science Fellow, Akeelah’s research examined the relationship between digital technologies and ancestral practices of gathering, resonance, and the technologies of the soul—inquiries that continue to inform her writing and installations.
Her reflections on these themes can be found at Just a Feeling on Substack, where she explores Sacred Architecture and ways of knowing that resist easy categorisation.
Akeelah's links:
• Substack: Just a Feeling - https://open.substack.com/pub/akeelahbertram
• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@studioakeelahbertram
• Website: www.akeelahbertram.com
People Doing Physics podcast, Ep 38 “Creativity in science: a conversation with Akeelah Bertram and Kevin Lim”: https://people-doing-physics.captivate.fm/episode/creativity-in-science-a-conversation-with-akeelah-bertram-and-kevin-lim
Cavendish Arts Science Fellowship: https://www.cavendish-artscience.org.uk/
CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities): https://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/about/
LEAP (Living Experiments in Arts-Science Practice to Re-imagine Sustainability) Lab: https://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/research/research-labs/leap-lab/
Podcast produced, hosted, recorded, and edited by Kevin Lim (@KevinTPLim): https://kevintplim.com
