Soft Power Festival—Day 2

✦

10am—noon

Calamidades Lola   |  Hall 2  ·   Radio—broadcast on Refuge Worldwide

✦

10—11.30am

Breathwork Workshop

Eva Maria Greiderer & Alexander Jenkin   |  Hall 1  ·   Immersive Workshop

A 90-minute immersive journey beyond the thinking mind, combining conscious breathing, music and guidance to create space away from the constant activity of the mind—reconnecting with body, emotions and inner landscape through intensity, release and stillness. No previous experience necessary.

✦

11am

Brunch Soft Power x Pintai

Pintai Collective   |   Sonnenraum  ·  Gathering

Soft Power is built on collaboration, solidarity and shared creative ambition. This showcase brings that to life with Pintai, one of Amsterdam's most exciting collectives—born from friends, coffee and records—meeting artists from the Soft Power cosmos for a dedicated brunch and day party. Line-up: Anahita Sadighi & Mike D, Marie Lung, Tibi Dabo, Karla Böhm, Hame (live), Mountain People, Lb Honne.

✦

11am—noon

Guided Tour   |  Sonnenraum  ·  Hall 1  ·  Hall 2  ·  Hall 1B

✦

noon—1pm

Sonic Staircase—A Guided Sound Journey

Vera   |   Hall 1  ·  Activation

A dreamlike journey guided by music, sounds and imagery that carry listeners inward. Just listen, to fall back into place.

✦

noon—2pm

Tata Nuo   |  Hall 2  ·   Radio—broadcast on Refuge Worldwide 

✦

noon—4pm

SPY Story: Art Practices to Counter-Fiction Disinformation—Zine Workshop

Arts of the Working Class   |   Hall 1B  ·  Workshop

See Friday listing for full details.

✦

1—4pm

Stitching Resilience—Mending as Ritual & The Community Quilt

Buki Akomolafe   |   Hall 1  ·  Stitching Workshop

See Friday listing for full details.

✦

1—4pm

Spice as Soft Power

Akshita Garud (Two Odd)   |   Hall 2  ·  Activation

See Friday listing for full details.

✦

2—3pm

Moehecan   |  Hall 2  ·   Radio—broadcast on Refuge Worldwide

✦

2—4pm

Cakes & Politics: Caique Tizzi x rustcakes

Caique Tizzi, rustcakes   |   Hall 2  ·  Activation in collaboration with the Berlin Gastro Solidarity Network

On the second day, Caique Tizzi's table becomes a space for examining the social conditions that make nourishment possible. Rust Cakes and Berlin Gastro Solidarity Network bring food into conversation with labour, access, care and solidarity, considering gastronomy as a field where pleasure and inequality, hospitality and labour, coexist.

rustcakes, founded by Slavic baker Hana Betakova, combines artisanal baking with an artistic, deliberately rough-edged approach; her edible sculptures draw on nostalgia, nature and shifting cultural memory.

✦

3—5pm

David Riley b2b Amuleto Manuela   |  Hall 2  ·   Radio—broadcast on Refuge Worldwide

✦

4—5pm

Love in Times of the Authoritarian Turn

Alice Hasters, Sintujan Varatharajah and Rosa Burç, moderated by Cihan Sinanoğlu   |   Hall 1  ·  Conversation

What can love mean at a time when societies are becoming more authoritarian, when belonging is defined more narrowly and solidarity increasingly depends on whose lives are considered worthy of protection? Moving between bell hooks' understanding of love as a practice of care and responsibility, and Hannah Arendt's scepticism toward loving political collectives, the panel asks what kinds of relationships democratic societies need—and what happens to them as societies grow more authoritarian.

✦

5—6pm

Pogolina

Julius Pristauz & Nasanin Dahaghin   |   Hall 2  ·  Performance—broadcast on Refuge Worldwide

Nightlife, performance and communal ritual have long provided spaces in which identities are tested and temporary forms of collective life emerge. Pristauz examines performative expression in relation to built space; Dahaghin works through dance, choreography, sound and repetition to structure perception. Together they consider what happens when performance leaves the bounded space of representation and becomes part of the conditions through which people gather.

✦

5—6pm

Mon-Puo (Live)  |   Hall 1   

✦

6—7pm

In Other Words: Language, Belonging and Cultural Translation

Havîn Al Sîndy, Celine Seeman, Payam Sharifi, moderated by Hanno Hauenstein   |   Hall 1  ·  Conversation—broadcast on Refuge Worldwide

Taking Attar's tale of the birds' search for the Simurgh as a starting point, Celine Seeman, Payam Sharifi (Slavs and Tatars) and Havîn Al-Sîndy gather to consider language as both baggage and shelter—something inherited, lost, translated, mispronounced and reinvented. From Kurdish to German, Farsi to English, Russian to everything in between, languages carry routes of migration, empire, exile and encounter, but also jokes, recipes and poetry.

✦

6—8pm

Henry Weekes   |  Hall 2  ·   Radio—broadcast on Refuge Worldwide

✦

7—8pm

Soft Power Sharing: From Subculture to Cultural Infrastructure

Lutz Leichsenring, Amba Kohlschmidt, Dimitri Hegemann, Dorothea Kerrutt, Anna Marazuela Kim, Anahita Sadighi   |   Hall 1  ·  Nighttime Foundation

Soft power has traditionally sat with major cultural institutions, but much of what builds belonging, experimentation and social cohesion starts elsewhere—in clubs, music scenes and community spaces, often at night. Drawing on examples from London and Berlin, the panel asks what changes when nightlife is recognised as cultural infrastructure in its own right, and how its lessons in hospitality and care might shape more resilient cities after dark.

✦

6—8pm

B.BBY   |  Hall 2  ·   Radio—broadcast on Refuge Worldwide

✦

8—9pm

The Power to Alter Reality: Music, Substance, Research

Fred P, Norman Ohler, Edna Bonhomme, moderated by María Inés Plaza Lazo   |  Hall 1  ·  Conversation

What does it take to change perception? Bringing together DJ Fred P, novelist Norman Ohler and journalist Edna Bonhomme, the conversation moves between the collective force of the dancefloor, the afterlives of political and chemical histories, and the ways archives can be revisited to recover knowledge obscured by dominant narratives—asking where the capacity to alter reality resides.

✦

4.30—5pm / 6.30—7pm / 8—9.30pm

Taking Up Space

Aathirai Valentine in collaboration with Pelin Gebhard, Florina Maya Vyas, Lana Berginc Predovič, Majin Management, Kavindu Sivaraj, Dior, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Ken Hagen, Poorarzhangy, Maison Margiela, Siri Majaroen   |   Hall 1B  ·  Activation

A group of women attend to the forms of labour through which women have historically been expected to make themselves visible and legible—occupying domestic space, performing femininity, remaining available to the gaze of others. Through deliberate stillness, the performance reclaims softness as a mode of presence without allowing it to turn weakness, passivity or decoration into subordination, locating its politics in the right to take up time, space and attention without having to produce, perform or prove one's value.

Aathirai Valentine is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice moves across performance, visual art and embodied forms of research, engaging questions of identity, gender, the body and lived experience.

✦

9—10pm

Ava Rasti (Live)  |   Hall 1

✦

9—10pm

Dracaena   |  Hall 2  ·   Radio—broadcast on Refuge Worldwide

✦

9—10pm

Guided Tour   |  Sonnenraum  ·  Hall 1  ·  Hall 2  ·  Hall 1B

✦

10—11pm

Ghostpoet   |   Hall 1

✦

11pm—1am

Dean Bryce  |   Hall 1

✦

1—3am

Christine Benz   |   Hall 1

✦

3—4am

Gizem Öz (Live)  |   Hall 1

✦

4—5am

Gizem Öz |   Hall 1

✦

5—7am

Lb Honne  |   Hall 1

✦

7—10am

Alexia  |   Hall 1

✦