Dear friends,

After years of make-shift working conditions, I’ve found, at last, not only a dedicated place to work, but also room to gather and host—at Cranachstraße 62. This new space for readings, exhibitions, and gatherings will be called maḳām.

مقام (maḳām), for me, is drawn from music and mysticism. The musical spheres it evokes are vast and multilayered, touching both the secular and the sacred. It not only denotes a unique improvisatory process in Turkish classical music, but is also reflected in traditions of Arabic, Persian, Sephardic Jewish, and Armenian liturgical music, as well as in the ēchos of Byzantine chant—neatly tying itself to صدا (ṣadā), which means “echo,” and which in Turkish is also seda.