To whom it may concern,

We have written this letter to draw your attention to a series of events that occurred during the 2025 Darmstädter Ferienkurse. We ask for your support as we urge the leadership of the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (IMD) to take corrective action.

(Traducción en español)

 

1. Factual account from the perspective of the students of the Ferienkurse

The Argentinian composer Ada Gomiz, a participant of the Ferienkurse, was preparing a new artwork as part of “The Enby Future Manifesto”. The IMD organized this workshop to investigate power structures and reflect on the conditioning determined by an artist’s origin. It was presented as a “utopian safe space”, as can be read on its official site. The participants' works were to be presented at the workshop’s final concert on Saturday, August 2nd, in the facilities of the Schader Foundation, a supporter of the Ferienkurse.

Fueled by the workshop’s declared intentions, the composer began exploring methods to artistically express her concerns about ongoing geopolitical, ecological, social, and spiritual crises. Gomiz drafted a work of art that, amongst other references, addressed the ongoing situation in Palestine with phrases such as “Stop Genocide" and “Free Palestine.” This work was developed in collaboration with another workshop participant, Ana Dueri, a Colombian-Palestinian composer and performer. Dueri and Gomiz were planning to include traditional Palestinian embroidery (“tatreez”) as a part of the final presentation.

 

On the morning of Thursday, July 31st, two days before the final exhibition, the Director of the Schader Foundation, Mr. Alexander Gemeinhardt, learned of the content of the artists’ work and demanded that the aforementioned phrases be removed, under the threat of cancelling the entire exhibition and calling the police, as explained by the tutor of the workshop, Luxa M. Schüttler. Shocked by the request, Gomiz left the exhibition space. In the artist’s absence, the work was removed. This action was taken without dialogue, giving Gomiz no opportunity to explain the work or her artistic intent.

Gomiz and Dueri requested a group meeting between the workshop participants, the tutor, and representatives from the Ferienkurse. After more than two hours of waiting, the IMD’s director, Dr. Thomas Schäfer, reversed his decision to attend. Instead, a member of the Ferienkurse’s “Awareness team” addressed the participants of the workshop. They referenced the Festival’s “Code of Conduct” in order to support the Schader Foundation’s position, closing any opportunity for discussion about the work. The participants were offered two choices: remove the written phrases or cancel the entire exhibition.

The participants of the workshop decided to stand by Gomiz and Dueri, supporting their freedom of artistic expression and refusing to censor their work. This decision was not made lightly, as it allowed the foundation to suppress the entire group.

This censorship therefore impacted not only Gomiz and Dueri, but all the participants of the workshop, who were unable to display their works under the intended conditions. Given Dueri’s Palestinian descent, the cancellation also restricted Dueri’s freedom to express her heritage and cultural identity, an act of anti-Palestinian racism.

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On the morning of Friday, August 1st, Gomiz published an open letter denouncing the IMD’s actions and asking the Ferienkurse for support in light of the traumatic situation. Representatives from the IMD contacted Gomiz to discuss her letter, but later failed to reply to Gomiz’ attempts to set up a meeting.

The IMD continued to evade direct communication with the involved participants and made no acknowledgement of the events at the Schader Foundation. Instead, the IMD published an Instagram story that mentioned the “strong emotions” of Gomiz’ letter without expressing any support for their students.

On the same day, the Mayor of Darmstadt, Hanno Benz, contributed a public press release and later a local news article that presented a distorted narrative about the content of Gomiz’ work. Benz wrote that the artists had offered “one-sided, history-oblivious, and undifferentiated accusations against Israel,” but failed to substantiate these accusations. He further suggested that it was the participants of the workshop who “decided to cancel the exhibition,” without mentioning the censorship or coercion exercised by the Schader Foundation.

Gomiz and Dueri were able to present part of their performance at a Ferienkurse concert later that night, thanks to a request from Bill Dietz. To support Gomiz, he provided space for the performance before the officially scheduled concert. Dr. Thomas Schäfer spoke before the piece, ensuring the audience understood that the performance was not sanctioned by the IMD. The inclusion of Gomiz and Dueri’s work was not publicized by the Ferienkurse, and no mention was made in retrospective materials, further distancing the festival from the performance.

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On the morning of Saturday 2nd of August, the final day of the festival, the daily email sent to all participants (both students and tutors) alluded to a “social media whirlwind of wild accusations.” Only then, on the last day of the festival, was a meeting finally held. Though the IMD requested a meeting with Gomiz alone, Gomiz insisted that other students be allowed to participate. The Ferienkurse’s team assumed a defensive position, expressing that they were the victims of unjust public disparagement and that no act of censorship had taken place. They continued to deny the students’ account of racism and discrimination and made no attempt to investigate it, violating the festival’s own Code of Conduct. The meeting concluded with no resolution. 

That afternoon, the participants of the "Enby Future Manifesto" workshop (excluding Gomiz and Dueri) were allowed to showcase a simplified version of their works at the sports hall of the Lichtenbergschule. The tutor of the workshop decided that the event should be listed at the program of activities of the Ferienkurse as "Untitled", since they felt that the original concept of the workshop had been distorted by the recent incidents. 

 

Today, more than three weeks after the end of the Ferienkurse, the IMD has not publicly acknowledged the issue nor contacted the involved participants. They continue to ignore the consequences of their actions on their students’ mental health, Gomiz’s career, and the many Ferienkurse participants (one example) who believe that artistic censorship is not a value that the Darmstadt Ferienkurse should foster.

Furthermore, when asked by journalists to comment on the situation, representatives from the IMD continue to refer only to the colored statement issued by the Mayor of Darmstadt, which excludes major facts regarding the situation, fails to acknowledge the students’ viewpoints, and offers no concrete justification for the actions taken. The IMD has failed to present an autonomous institutional position.

 

2. Reflection

We understand that the IMD and the Schader Foundation may have intended to act in the defense of the Jewish population in Germany, based on the Foundation’s accusation of antisemitism, but we emphasize that the artwork contained no references to or discriminatory phrases against Judaism. The work aimed to problematize the colonialist violence enacted upon oppressed peoples as a whole, which Gomiz recognizes as a burden of her own cultural identity as a “white” Argentinian of European descent.

The work is framed by her acknowledgement of the colonial extermination of the indigenous people of the territories now known as “Argentina.” As she clarified in her open letter, Gomiz sought to identify this phenomenon globally and draw a parallel between the colonization of Argentina and the colonialist behavior enacted against Palestine by several different states throughout history.

The censored paper strips contained the following, clarifying phrases: “I’m winka” (“I’m white/I’m a conqueror”), and “Argentina is a genocide state”, amongst others. The very title of the artwork, “Huella winka” (translatable as “white/conqueror footprint”), clarifies that the main message of the work was the critique of colonialism in a broad sense. In this light, it is clear that the work intended to deconstruct Gomiz’ own identity, not only accusing others. Accusing such a work of antisemitism, as the Schader Foundation did, demonstrates that little care was taken to understand the meaning of the work.

We consider antisemitism an inadmissible behavior and fully condemn it; however, we believe that the accusations of antisemitism that are hastily advanced towards artists and thinkers who foster critical engagement with sociopolitical phenomena are often a smokescreen used by people who wish to manipulate public discourse and therefore should be addressed with particular care by the art world. To us, such actions have a deleterious effect on the fight against actual cases of anti-Jewish violence and water down the collective effort against such antisemitism.

We are saddened that the involved institutions chose to censor the work rather than interpret it, and failed to foster a dialogue that would have resolved the misunderstandings that led to this regrettable situation. The IMD displayed no interest, care, or respect toward the work of their students and made no consideration regarding their identities, an act that deeply affected their community of current and former students.

Denying Gomiz’s free expression is an act of censorship. It follows a worrying line of common rhetoric that seeks to erase Palestinian history. Employing this rhetoric is an act of racism, which was also directed at Dueri, the only Palestinian student in the course. Palestinian culture was permitted in other student organized events within the IMD, a positive trend that, regarding this case and its aftermath, was unfortunately reversed. 

 

—— 

 

We are aware of the delicate political situation in which the IMD operates, as a German institution that must abide by German laws and “Reasons of State.” However, we believe that the IMD failed to meet some of the core educational purposes of the Ferienkurse, as stated by the composer Marco Momi, who, as a sign of solidarity with Ada Gomiz, returned the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis that the IMD awarded him in 2008.

The “Code of Conduct” of the Ferienkurse could have guided the handling of this situation–it instructs participants to enable social participation, address conflicts and try to solve them together, welcome constructive criticism, and “not tolerate any form of sexism, racism and discrimination.” Remarkably, it also condemns discrimination based on “political opinion.” Conversely, the “Code of Conduct” was used selectively, protecting the censorship enacted by the Schader Foundation but not the festival’s own students. The Code was wielded to preserve the institutional interests of the IMD rather than defend the integrity of its participants.

 

—— 

 

We believe in an art that fosters critical engagement with all levels of reality. We believe that the frictions that such art creates must be met with an equally critical stance–one that understands dialogue as a means of resolution and condemns the violent weight of censorship. As young artists, we should be protected by the institutions that we trust with our growing artistic sensibilities and our dreams for a better world.

If we do not receive such care, we will act as a community to construct the spaces that meet our needs.

 

 

3. Requests to the IMD

 

As a united community, we support Ada Gomiz, Ana Dueri and their teammates. We request that the IMD participate in a public forum in which the following are acknowledged:

• the misinterpretation of Ada Gomiz' work and its subsequent censorship by the Schader Foundation, enacted without a factual explanation of the decision’s motivation and without allowing the artist to explain her ideas
• the instances of racism and discrimination faced by IMD students –Ana Dueri in particular–which contradict the values stated in the IMD’s own Code of Conduct
• the consequences faced by all the participants of the “Enby Future Manifesto” workshop, who were unable to share their works in the originally promised conditions, itself a form of censorship
• the distorted narrative shared by the Mayor of Darmstadt in his press release and other public media, presumably based on a partial account of facts given to him by the involved institutions, excluding the points of view of the students of the Ferienkurse
• the inactivity of the IMD in the immediate aftermath of the situation, the institution’s ongoing silence, and the harm that has been caused to its students.

Additionally, we call on the IMD to establish a clear plan for future editions of the Ferienkurse, including the delineation of a protocol that protects students when handling politically-motivated artworks and the creation of a student council to advise each future edition of the Ferienkurse.

 

 

PDFs of hyperlinked articles: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oPjhzAkisrMXvS5PnuUySifIDiFvWyIh?usp=drive_link

 

 

 

Students of the 2025 Darmstädter Ferienkurse: Irene Ballesteros, Mateo Servián Sforza, Agnes Kofoed Christianson, Victor Vogel, Fanny Meteier, Ana Dueri, Gabo Champagne, Marco Luparia, Zacharias Wolfe, Ada Gomiz, Liam Battle, Vittoria Ecclesia, Evelin Lindberg, Albane Tamagna, Alessia Gardenal, Ghazal Faghihi, Raegan Padula, Ryan Garvey, Bridget Bourne, Gabriel Boyarin, Inga Aas, Jenna Vergeynst

 

Letter published on 27th August 2025