In 2018, guewel cultural custodian Lamine Sonko was invited by his cultural elders in Senegal to undertake a journey into an ancient African cosmovision; a worldview in which existence is sacred, cyclical, and profoundly interconnected. The elders who hold this knowledge are messengers, and mediators who who tell us of yesterday’s memories and tomorrow’s dreams through song, rhythm, and ritual and ceremony, to share knowledge and renew collective spirit.

From this beginning, and in collaboration with artists, cultural communities, and researchers across Australia and Africa, Sonko founded 13.12 as an initiative to explore, embody, and activate these knowledge systems, bringing ancestral intelligence into present-day contexts, as something continuously lived, practiced, and renewed.

As the world grapples with the challenges of modernity, ancestral ways become even more vital, offering guidance, and a path towards collective consciousness and social transformation. At its core, 13.12 engages these ways of knowing as they are held by their custodians, while opening them into dialogue with the broader human experience.