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
04/2024: Israel - Palestine // Statement
Our Code of Conduct outlines the principles of behaviour we uphold: Human dignity, anti-discrimination, non-violence, and advocacy for freedom and equal rights for everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation, identity, background, level of education, and other such factors. These values are also critical for the foundation of our perspective on the humanitarian crisis in Israel and Palestine. Given recent events, we feel it is imperative to clarify our stance within this discourse.
Disclaimer: the historical contexts are complicated and we as a crew are no experts on this subject. We are a heterogeneous group and even though our opinions on this topic do not align completely, we do share many core values. This is a snapshot of our believes in late march 2024. We will continue to learn and possibly change our views as we gather more information, thus we will likely change some of our wordings in the future. That is part of the learning process. We still see the need to give a glimpse of our current opinions now.
We stand in solidarity with the civilian population of Palestine, who, just like all other people in the world, have a right to a peaceful, self-determined, free life in dignity and safety. We strongly oppose and condemn the ongoing bombardment and shelling, through which the Israeli government has already killed over 33,000 people in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, at least a third of whom are children. We demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
Since the Nakba in 1948 many Palestinians live under oppressive rules and face a system of oppression. As the Gaza Strip over the years is repeatedly attacked, many grow up with hunger, illness, water and electricity shortage, ongoing violence and trauma. Also in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (which by UN-rule is illegally occupied), there are repeatedly brutal attacks on Palestinian people by Israeli settlers and military as well as illegal land-seizures. Due to the ongoing oppression and different laws for Israelis and Palestinians, some criticize the system that Palestinian face as a form of apartheid.
We want to be clear that we condemn the attacks of October 7th, which were in large parts carried out by the Hamas with killing at least 1,100 Israelis, including 695 civilians as well as 260 ravers which were brutally murdered in the attack on the Supernova festival. We condemn this, as well as the use of sexualized violence and the kidnapping of more than two hundred hostages. We recognize the suffering and trauma to which the attacks have led and call for an immediate and safe release of the remaining hostages.
In this regard, we must be clear that Hamas, with its clerical-fascist political agenda, is an avowed enemy of the free, diverse and open society. They are a corrupt radical Islamist regime that has violently ruled Gaza for 16 years while having declared its intention to destroy Israel and its jewish population: the Hamas attack was anti-Semitic and inhumane and must not be relativized. Anyone who celebrates Hamas despite this knowledge is not celebrating with us!
While condemning the terrorist attacks of the Hamas in the strongest terms, the same holds for Israels attacks on Palestinians. The "war against Hamas" is a disproportionate war against the Palestinian civilian population, which is under investigations of the International Court of Justice in The Hague upon South Africa's request to determine whether Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. The population of Gaza is facing complete annihilation. Millions are in acute danger of starvation, diseases are spreading and, according to the UN, mass deaths are imminent. More than 70% of the houses in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or damaged and the education and healthcare systems have been almost completely destroyed. While Israel repeatedly commits human rights violations and bombs security zones and hospitals, public criticism of Israel's policies and the war against the Palestinians has been held back for far too long by means of omnipresent accusations of anti-Semitism. The necessary consequences are still not being taken.
According to a 2023 report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 69% of Israel’s arms purchases come from US firms and 30% from Germany. The EU, Germany and the USA should stop being complicit with the immense suffering of the Palestinian People and exert more pressure on the Israeli government to end the bombardment and killing of Palestinians.
We are watching with concern the growing power of the radical right-wing, ultra-orthodox and populist Israeli government, whose actions are inhumane and racist.
We acknowledge that both, Israelis and Palestinians, have a right to exist in a sovereign state.
We stand in solidarity with Muslims who are subject to general suspicion worldwide and in Germany and who are experiencing growing anti-Muslim racism and hostility. We show solidarity with Jews who are exposed to increasing anti-Semitism globally, regionally and in Germany.
As to the German discourse:
We distance ourselves from the silencing of people who criticise the Israeli government. States are a human-made construct that go hand in hand with power and therefore also abuse and oppression. Criticism of a state and a government must always be possible. However, we see the need to be precise in our criticism: We criticize the government of Israel and not its civilian population of Israel. To not be precise in this regards, leads to discrimination.
We are concerned about the lack of complexity and recognition of simultaneity in the German discourse.
Germany's raison d'état (Staatsraison) is used as an excuse to avoid criticizing the actions of the Israeli government. We think the historically based German raison d'état should rather be to take a global stand against anti-human, group-based violence than to unconditionally stand up for the Israeli government.
We see that particularly BIPoC suffer from the restriction of freedom of opinion and assembly and the German discourse. The general suspicion and discrimination which is fired up by German media and politicians makes it impossible for activists to show their solidarity (for example, because some of them only have a residence permit, are fired from their jobs and so on). There is an increasingly racist, discriminatory climate in Germany. We also see this with the increasing adoption of right-wing rhetoric from all parties, that dehumanize BIPoC as well as Jews who speak up against the government of Israel. We are concerned about the increase in anti-Muslim racism and anti-Semitism in Germany and, as a collective, we want to try to create spaces which are aware of racism, anti-semitism and other forms of discrimination and act in solidarity with people who experience discrimination.
On the festival:
As cultural practitioners, we want to create spaces in which an open discourse is possible and different perspectives can be recognized, accepted and if needed, discussed. Culture is political, and so is our festival.
At the festival, we want to create a space as safe as possible, also for marginalized communities, including BIPoC, FLINTA*, Muslims and Jews. To this end, we are in the process of seeking external expert advice to work on awareness and safety concepts for the festival and the arrival and departure. Through our external communication, we want to clearly show that there is no place for racist, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, right-wing, or other misanthropic or discriminatory stances at our festival. We reserve the right to expel persons from the premises if necessary.
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