About us
Find out more about our intention and read our internal Code of Conduct here.
The Fluid Team consists to a very large extent of white cis people with a predominantly academic background and German citizenship. Our group represents queer and straight perspectives. The team actively engages with these power dynamics and is in the process of learning and elaborating the concept of allyship and powersharing.
Disclaimer: See our glossaries for definitions of the terms we use here.
News
03/2023: Racist Incident // Statement
With this post we want to take responsibility for a racist incident that occured in the context of the work of Fluid Festival and present our reprocessing.
This is about visibility, clarification and solidarization with the person affected.
Read the full statement here.
08/2022: No-Nipple-Policy // Statement
The first Fluid Festival worked with a No-Nipple-Policy and we want to explain why:
On the one hand, we are aware that bodily freedom is a way of empowerment for many, especially for the trans*, inter*, non-binary and queer community. On the other hand, in our heteronormative, (cis)sexist dominated society, it is not possible for all people to freely show their upper body without experiencing violence (being misread, experiencing sexist assault, etc.). Bodies of people are valued differently in our society and especially female read people are sexualized faster.
By covering nipples at Fluid Festival, we want to draw attention to the unequal topless policy and point out that especially in the media space often only certain nipples are censored. For our first Fluid Festival it has been important to us that all visitors become aware of this power dynamic - that masculinely read people and cis men are hardly if at all affected by it - and that a Free Nipple culture is precisely only possible if all visitors treat each other sensitively and feel safer.
For the first time we were able to get to know and experience our visitors. We are very happy that so many people from the queer community felt addressed and visited us. However, since it was difficult for us to estimate our audience and the sensitive interaction with each other before the event, we deliberately decided on a No-Nipple-Policy.
We alone do not create a safer space with our Code of Conduct, but only together with all people. It is important to us that everyone can feel safer at Fluid Festival. Therefore, we want to create a mindful and aware space and sensitize privileged groups. Since creating safer spaces for queer people, among others, is a big concern for us, we would like to work towards a Free Nipple Festival in the long run and further sensitize ourselves as Allys so that every marginalized community feels seen and taken seriously.
We welcome sharing and your thoughts,
the Fluid Festival Team
09/2022: Unsafe arrival and depature for BI_PoC and queer people // Statement
Dear visitors, staff and artists,
We would like to address you once again to make the events around the arrival and departure situation during Fluid Festival 2022 transparent, which were not acceptable, especially for the BI_PoC and queer community. We feel this is necessary to show our own mistakes, to take responsibility for them and to make the further resulting psychological burden on these communities visible.
On Tuesday, June 21, we received a message via Instagram that Bassliner tickets were no longer available for purchase via the website. We then inquired with Bassliner about the cause and learned that there were too few ticket purchases and therefore the offer was discontinued by Bassliner. At this point, there were two options for us:
To continue the cooperation and to have to carry a sum of about 12,000 euros ourselves due to the limited tickets sold.
To cancel the already sold tickets and to refund the money to our visitors.
Due to the high financial risk, additionally caused by steadily increasing production costs, and the threat of insolvency, we saw no other option but to cancel the planned Bassliner shuttle from Berlin to the festival site. To our regret, we were not informed about the stagnating sales figures of Bassliner. This meant that we could neither inform our visitors nor find safe alternatives in time for the festival.
At this point we would like to apologise for not fulfilling our responsibility in providing a safe arrival and departure infrastructure. The use of public transport (for example the 9-Euro-Ticket) is not equally accessible and safe for all people. For people with experiences of discrimination, it can be associated with difficulty, violent experiences and fear. Traveling through Germany is not equally safe for everyone. It can mean being exposed to structural racism, sexism, queer* and trans* hostility. The additional costs for alternative travel options are again borne by the affected communities.
Our attempt to build a platform for carpooling was initiated too late to actually offer a safe alternative. We would like to sincerely apologise for this as well.
For the next festival year we will prioritise the organisation of a safe arrival and departure to the festival site. A carpooling portal for networking should be set up in time and with the resources at our disposal we will offer our own shuttle from the nearest train station to the festival site.
In addition, we would like to make our lack of organisation of the arrival and departure of our awareness staff visible. We did not communicate clearly enough in advance that we can only offer a few private shuttle services due to our scarce financial resources. With the Bassliner cancelations, some individuals were faced with the challenge of not having a safe and at the same time cost-effective way to get to their workplace. We would like to apologise for this as well and especially thank the affected individuals who brought this to our attention and did the educational work for us.
Next time, we want to try to expand our offers here as well.
In addition, we would like to thank also and especially - the people who took other visitors* in their cars and the FLINTA+ and BI_PoC collectives and individuals who helped us on Sunday to cope with this departure situation. It is worth highlighting that again affected communities were the ones who did the work. Thank you to JUA Collective, Coraci, Minzgespinst, and Mariama (Bildung Macht Rassismus, BLACK COMMUNITY Coalition For Justice & Self-Defence).
If there are any criticisms, comments or questions from your side, feel free to use our survey (follows). In addition, if you feel the need to address any specific situations, feel free to write to us at awareness@fluidfestival.de.
Kind regards
the Fluid Team
09/2022: Unsafe ground and change of ground // Statement
Dear visitors, staff and artists,
We would like to inform you that the next edition of Fluid Festival will take place on a different site and explain why we have decided to change the site.
Due to a previous conflict of values at the end of 2021 with the landowner of our original venue, we were forced to look for a new festival site in early 2022 under time pressure. After contacting a large number of municipalities, landlords and other festival organisers, only one landlord was able to provide us with a site at such short notice.
We are and were aware that Brandenburg is not a safe destination for people from the Bi_PoC and queer community. Nevertheless, and this is where we have to clearly state our vacancy and especially our white privileges, we failed to carry out a thorough location and background check of the region as well as to address our values and awareness with the municipality and the landlords in order to ensure that we could work according to the same ideas and on a common basis.
Due to various incidents that occurred during the course of the festival, we are unable to agree on a next edition of Fluid Festival at this year's venue. We would like to sincerely apologise to all affected visitors who had to face traumatising or violent situations due to our reckless actions regarding the choice of terrain. We would also like to apologise to those who had to decide against visiting the Fluid Festival due to our actions. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank in particular all the members of the Awareness Team who, despite being affected themselves, helped us to deal with the incidents.
However, due to the scarce availability of suitable areas, we cannot rule out the possibility that the next festival site will be in Brandenburg. Regardless of where next year's festival will be located, we will focus more on entering into a close dialogue with our landlords about our awareness and values, as well as involving the community in which we are organising in this dialogue. Ideally, we would like to work with festivals and/or collectives that have a clear outward stance critical of racism and discrimination, as well as political. We will also ensure that all visitors are able to travel to and from the festival more safely.
Our handling of the site selection has once again shown us from which positionings and privileges given from this we have decided and acted, and that we are still at the very beginning in terms of powersharing and allyship. We will learn from this, continue to work on our voids and take on more responsibility in the future.
In addition, if you feel the need to share about a specific situation that is still bothering you or has been bothering you, feel free to write to us at:
Kind regards
the Fluid Team