In the coming months, we want to:

• Build strong partnerships and increase our visibility.
• Secure further funding to enable an extended project duration.
• Develop a clear design language that combines innovative design with classic communication functions.
• Take our public relations work to the next level.

Experience in difgl project work has shown that personal exchange is the most fertile ground for innovation and growth. We look forward to everything that comes and are happy to have such a great partner as the Filmuni at our side.

SPLEE – Platform for Essays and Discourses

Last year, together with the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, we launched the project “SPLEE – Streaming Platform for Longreads and Essays from Europe”, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Our aim is to make European discourses accessible across borders to all citizens in their respective languages. With AI-supported translations and data visualization, we are facilitating access to essays from leading European media companies.

The project promotes democratic exchange and strengthens understanding of European perspectives. Our interactive website will be launched soon.

KIDD – Artificial Intelligence Serving Diversity

In the research project “KIDD – Artificial Intelligence Serving Diversity”, funded by the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs under the umbrella of the New Quality of Work Initiative (INQA), we have worked with our partners to develop quality criteria, training courses, the KIDD process and a self-audit for the diversity-sensitive implementation of AI systems. The project has been completed for several months, and we regularly incorporate our knowledge into our consulting services and workshops for companies and institutions.

Upcoming AI Events:

On March 11, 2025, difgl Managing Director Katja Anclam, together with Annette Gräfin von Wedel for female.vision, will be invited as an AI expert to the ver.di specialist conference “Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence in Retail” in Berlin. There, they will be running an interactive workshop on the fair and equitable use of AI. The conference will present practical ways in which retail employees can systematically participate in the introduction of AI and how interest groups can optimally exploit their rights to information, participation and co-determination with regard to AI.

More information here: https://handel.verdi.de/themen/++co++9ccf2940-d7d4-11ef-b40d-f365f03bf377 .

AI ImpactDays on April 09 – Artificial Intelligence for a Better World

This year, AI expert and difgl GF Katja Anclam will also be at the AI Impact Days in Berlin, the leading practical event for impact through artificial intelligence in the DACH region. Her mission: AI for Good!

More information here: https://ai-impactdays.socialimpact.eu .

The fact is: AI remains an important driver for a good life in the future. That is why we are further expanding our range of consulting services relating to trustworthy AI in 2025. Interested?

Why is this important? Studies show that 65% of people in Europe have difficulty distinguishing between reliable information and disinformation (source: EU Digital Progress Report 2024). This has concrete consequences: Poor decisions, loss of trust in institutions, and polarization of society are increasing. According to a study by the Oxford Internet Institute 2023, the spread of disinformation leads to a feeling of powerlessness and insecurity among 45% of those surveyed.

SPLEE promotes critical thinking and offers space for knowledge – across borders and accessible, and this is precisely where it starts: Through free access to well-founded essays and longreads from Europe’s leading media, the platform creates a reliable source for in-depth knowledge. Instead of fragmented information, citizens receive well-researched content.

How does SPLEE defuse these consequences?

· Orientation instead of uncertainty: SPLEE offers space for critical thinking and comprehensible insights into social, cultural, and scientific topics.

· Trust instead of polarization: Disinformation and polarization can be countered through transparency and well-founded content.

· Participation instead of powerlessness: Knowledge is the basis for active participation. Those who are informed can make informed decisions and participate democratically.

SPLEE is the platform of the future for the most important discourses in the EU. In 2025, it is time for all EU citizens to benefit from it.

Your work often seems to operate at the intersection of physicality, materiality, and technology. How does the idea for a performance come about – does it begin with an idea of movement, a particular material, or a technical experiment?
It varies greatly: In Women at the Stove, kitchen utensils made of metal, magnets on costumes and kitchen walls were at the beginning – so the material. In addition, there were electromagnets in the platform soles of the shoes, which can, for example, magnetize brooms and pots and release them again – so a technical experiment. In the performance Latex, on the other hand, the idea of movement gave the first impulse: When watching a classical ballet, I had the idea of making the immense power with which dancers jump visible. For this, I attached the hem of a highly stretchable latex dress to the floor: The force of the jump is thus braked. When the dancer figure jumps, the dress visually stretches far in length, while the latex fabric simultaneously slaps audibly against the legs.

You often expose your body to extreme physical stress in your work. What role does this boundary experience play in the statement of your performances? And how do you reflect on the expectations of female bodies in the process?
In the performance Ytong, I dance flamenco on a Ytong stone, with thick spikes under my dancing shoes – until the stone is broken down into rubble and dust. Through an act of destruction, I reach my physical limits by dismantling the base, the pedestal on which I dance. It becomes increasingly fragile until I fall down. Here, the sculpture is not created in a conventional artistic creation process, but through its reversal, the destruction. At the same time, I am dismantling the image of the dancer: From the initially “classical” flamenco – in pumps, with castanets – the destruction of the base turns into a swaying balancing act. The flamenco increasingly gets out of time, my movements become arrhythmic, rowing, until I fall.

How do you choose your materials, and what do they reveal about the narratives you want to tell?
I check the materials for their choreographic usability: How do they break, fall, shatter, stretch, sound, swing? Are the material processes and resulting sounds interesting? Are the materials and their installative arrangement coherent, do narratives arise that I sometimes, but not always, control. In the performance Spare Tires, I dealt with the racing driver Clärenore Stinnes; for me, her story was a kind of underground on which I worked. Often, however, the images and stories arise in the minds of viewers and art critics: In Muddclubsolo, I wear a red outdoor tent as a dress and hang on my hair, which is braided into a braid, which reminded many of the figure of Olympia from the stories of E.T.A. Hoffmann.

The theme of femininity runs like a red thread through your work. How do you define modern femininity in an artistic context – especially in the field of tension between autonomy, technology, and body?
It is very often about images of women and women’s roles. When I started my studies at the Art Academy in Munich, there was a shelf “Women” in the library. It was that simple: The few performance artists that existed at that time were simply sorted into a corner. That was striking! Specifically, I ask different questions in my performances. An example: For millennia, women in almost all parts of the world have been reduced to the kitchen and the stove. They were confined and restricted in the smallest space, in their freedom of movement, in their actions, in short: in their dignity as individual personalities with all their possibilities. And although this has changed a lot in our society, much of what women can do and do is still ranked rather low on the scale of values. With Women at the Stove, I return to the place where women were deprived of their dignity: It is a heavy metal art performance with household appliances. Emancipated, self-confident, with a lot of energy. The kitchen becomes a percussive-scenic sound space, the woman at the stove becomes an artist who is all that women have long been forbidden to be: visible, loud (also quiet), unique.

Your performances often work even without your physical presence, such as in installations or retrospectives. What does this independence of your works mean for your role as a performer and artist?
Actually, it only means that I don’t always have to be physically present.
I once tried to perform with an installation running independently of me, the Walking Machine. That was a machine that had seven pairs of dancing shoes running at the same time. These shoes were prepared by me with different materials, so that they produced different sounds. In the process, I realized that it is uninteresting to perform with a stoically running machine. Ultimately, the Walking Machine became an exhibit.
Unlike my performances, my installations are performative in that they move, but they are self-contained, mostly repetitive performances.

The difgl deals with questions of the good life and social transformation. In your opinion, what impulses can art – especially performative installation art – give to think about alternative ways of life and technologies?
Art is always creative and innovative, so there is hardly any area that provides more impulses for social transformation. That is a truism. Whether performance and installation can do this better than other art forms, I do not know. But certainly installations fit into our time of machines, and performance has emerged as a liberation from the constraints of conventional art settings, so both carry highly topical impulses: The installation the mechanical, the performance the great challenge that absolute freedom brings with it: Here it is a matter of casting an anchor again and again in the vast ocean of possibilities.

Depicting, communicating, and presenting the good life: difgl is filming on location for the latest report for the Mittelstand-Digitalzentrum Tourismus. Sina Heider and Fabienne Sand are providing the editorial preparation together to realize a new video report for the Mittelstand Digital Zentrum Tourismus with cameraman Gulliver Theis.

What does the Mittelstand Digital Zentrum Tourismus offer? How can SMEs be supported in digitization and how can we bring clarity to the impenetrable jungle of offers and information? We translate these questions into digital answers and are pleased with the high-quality and coherent result.

difgl produces your audiovisual project.

The core competencies of difgl; development, planning, implementation, finalization can be applied to very different projects. We look forward to upcoming exciting challenges and are happy to advise you on your project idea!

Contact: contact@difgl.de

Depicting, communicating, and presenting the good life: Difgl is filming on location for the latest report for MDZT. Sina Heider and Fabienne Sand are providing the editorial preparation to realize a new video report for the Mittelstand Digital Zentrum Tourismus (SME Digital Center Tourism) together with cameraman Gulliver Theis. What does the Mittelstand Digital Zentrum Tourismus offer? How can SMEs be supported in digitalization, and how can we bring clarity to the impenetrable jungle of offers and information?

difgl produces your audiovisual project.

The core competencies of difgl…

• Development
• Planning
• Implementation
• Finalization

…can be applied to a wide variety of projects.

We look forward to upcoming exciting challenges.

Using a best practice example, our now second film shows how the MDZT’s consulting is specifically implemented in practice.

For the new video report of the MDZT, difgl editors Fabienne Sand and Sina Heider travel to Brandenburg. Together with Ronja Gaulinger from the Fraunhofer Institute, an expert in sustainable technologies in tourism, they are shooting a short report that shows the AI-driven progress in tourism and takes you to the Gut Wendgräben.

How can I use AI in my company?

What are the direct benefits of these technologies in my company?

How do guests benefit from the innovations?

The film addresses these questions and shows what the direct sphere of influence of the MDZT can look like. The difgl is pleased to be able to support the MDZT in this important communication campaign.

Editors Sina Heider and Fabienne Sand were on the road with filmmaker Gulliver Theis at Hanna and Stefan Hasenbank’s. The Gut Wendgräben was not only a good place to implement new AI innovations, it was also an incredibly beautiful backdrop for our report.

What is the best way to deal with phases of high workload? Are there measures to reduce stress during such times?

For me, phases of high workload primarily mean finding structure and clearly prioritising – also in exchange with colleagues, in order to prevent misunderstandings that often slow down the work unnecessarily. Personally, I have to pay attention to regularity in my diet and exercise, and I need a lot of rest and time in the fresh air to get through stressful phases calmly and thoughtfully.

What challenges are you often confronted with and how should you face them?

The challenges are often that you feel paralysed by the many to-dos and don’t know where to start. Here, it helps me to make a clear plan and work through one thing after the other and to acknowledge that the situation is challenging.

How can a company promote a healthy work-life balance for its employees?

In general, I also think it is important that a company recognises strenuous work phases and remains flexible in order to allow employees recovery phases, so that an employee remains motivated in the long term and does not burn out. In my opinion, it is also necessary for the employer to maintain a healthy work-life balance themselves and to demonstrate this to the team.

Fabienne, how do you define a “good life”?

Approaching the balance and well-timed interplay of career, self-realization, leisure, and family or friends. When it flows, people are doing well, provided there is no lack of resources. Fulfilled basic needs are ultimately the most important asset, otherwise nothing works.

How has your understanding of a good life changed over time?

With increasing age, I have definitely understood that consumption and possessions give me less than I thought. Things that I used to buy to feel better are now gathering dust in the corner. Time for myself and others is now the highest good.

What is the significance of work for you in a good life?

For me, paid work must take a subordinate role. This does not mean that I do not want to or cannot prioritize it, but it does mean that I think it is important that employers recognize and accept the role that paid work plays in the lives of employees. This works very well at Difgl. For me, this means more motivation and less worry.

Is work then the same as self-realization?

For me, work is self-sustaining. If you are lucky, the work also gives you pleasure, you work in a great team and develop things that are interesting, for which you like to stand up for.

Do you believe that self-realization is an essential component of a good life?

Certainly. Doing what really fulfills you is part of it. Whether that takes place at work or in your free time: I think it is important that there is such a thing, that people can be passionate about something and enjoy being active and engaged. If the space is connected to paid work, so much the better.