Code of Ethics

Since its beginning, EMAF has been dedicated to exploring the interfaces between art and technology, their social condition, and potentials for transformation. EMAF has always been a place for freedom of art and expression, for critical debate, and encounters in mutual respect.

We publish this Code of Ethics in response to a climate, particularly in the cultural sector, of growing divisions and pressures that are making it challenging for institutions and those working within them to act. We resolutely oppose politically motivated interference in programming decisions as well as the call for background checks on participants or for increased mistrust of individual groups or people.

We stand up against racism, antisemitism [1], anti-Muslim hatred, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, ageism, and any form of physical or verbal violence. Creating and maintaining the conditions for this requires ongoing, collective work and proactive, self-reflective behaviour on the part of everyone involved in the festival. Texts such as this one can be a useful way of taking a stand, but they cannot replace these efforts. We invite you to co-create our festival.

The EMAF community is diverse. Our actions as political beings may take on a variety of forms, whether they are loud and explicit, or acting behind the scenes and implicit. We respect the decision of all those who, in solidarity with the Palestinian people, decide to suspend their cooperation with German institutions in order to emphasise their demand to protect artistic freedom, and to focus the fight against antisemitism and structural racism.

We want to continue to host EMAF as a space that reflects and protects this plurality of opinions and forms of expression. In practising these ethics together, we will occasionally fail. For that reason, it is all the more important that we continue to share our diverse knowledge and experiences with each other.

We join the urgent calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.

[1] According to the working definition outlined in the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), https://jerusalemdeclaration.org/.