From 23 to 26 October 2025, the sixth edition of fluctoplasma – Festival for Art, Discourse and Diversity took place in Hamburg. Dagesh was involved as a cooperation partner and played a key role in shaping the core content of the festival, the ‘tilting structures’ conference. The conference highlighted a wide range of positions taken by Jewish artists on the central question of how diversity can be structurally anchored in art and cultural work. Dagesh artists also came together for a networking meeting during the festival.
At the opening of the conference on 24 October, Dagesh speaker Yana Lemberska and Leyla Erkus (Licht ins Dunkel e. V/ Kein Schlussstrich!) gave speeches. Panels and discussions examined the past, present and future of multi-perspective cultural work and linked it to approaches for structurally anchoring diversity beyond pure representation logic. Contributors to the conference included Julia Wissert (artistic director of Schauspiel Dortmund), Jörg Albrecht (author and director of the Centre for Literature) and representatives of the newly founded Museum Selma (DOMiD e.V.).
FOLKADU concert ‘From Charm to Chutzpah’
A special highlight was the concert ‘From Charm to Chutzpah’ by the band FOLKADU, featuring Dagesh artist Yael Gat, on 25 October at TONALi. With an unusual line-up – featuring vocals, oud, accordion, trumpet and shofar – the ensemble took the audience on a journey through the soundscapes of global Jewish folk music. Hebrew, Yiddish and Ladino songs, poems and traditional melodies merged into a contemporary repertoire that made Jewish diversity audible and tangible.
Exhibition ‘traces beyond the west’
The group exhibition ‘traces beyond the west’ brought together works from photography, drawing, installation, video and textiles that deal with the aftermath and current manifestations of violence, colonialism and disasters. Dagesh artist Hadas Tapouchi was represented with her work ‘Poznan – Force,’ a photographic series in which she documents the topographical traces of former forced labour camps in Poland and shows how history remains inscribed in everyday spaces – often invisible, but omnipresent.
Dagesh network meeting as part of the fluctoplasma festival
On 25 October, members of the Dagesh Network came together for a network meeting as part of fluctoplasma. The meeting provided an opportunity for exchange, networking and personal encounters between artists and cultural professionals from the network. Together, the participants attended the concert ‘Von Charme bis Chutzpah’ (From Charm to Chutzpah) and the exhibition ‘traces beyond the west’. After a joint guided tour, an intensive exchange about the presented works developed. In the discussions with the artists present, questions of memory, responsibility and the visualisation of the repressed were particularly central. The artistic positions opened up new perspectives on the relationship between history and the present and encouraged reflection on the role of art as a space for remembrance and as a catalyst for social change.
The collaboration with the fluctoplasma Festival created an important space in which art and responsibility, memory and the future could enter into dialogue with one another, and in which contemporary Jewish voices and positions in contemporary Jewish art became visible in all their diversity. The festival programme impressively highlighted the potential of artistic practice for shaping a society based on solidarity and underlined the special role of Dagesh as a platform for contemporary Jewish art in social discourse. We would like to express our special thanks to curators Nina Reiprich and Dan Thy Nguyen, as well as the entire fluctoplasma team, for their wonderful collaboration. We look forward to continuing this collaboration in the coming year.
