FIRST I WAS AFRAID I WAS PETRIFIED BÂTARD 2022

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What is Bâtard? 

 

For 18 years, Bâtard Festival has been operating as a platform supporting and presenting emerging artists. It strives to constantly investigate in which ways and from which grounds upcoming artists can “emerge” while cultivating a bastard spirit of artistic daringness and political reflection.  

 

 

First I was afraid, I was petrified.

Dear Bâtardes and Bastards, 

Where to start…

Maybe by saying that we fucking missed you, and that we hope you missed us too. 

The past year has been particularly unkind, and that’s a polite way to say it.

For Bâtard, it started with the unpredictable challenge of imagining an online festival. Trying to make sense of the weirdest present while staying loyal to Bâtard’s playful spirit. Quite a difficult one, but it was worth the sweat. 

A few months later, some unforeseen news arrived: we wouldn’t get the funding for our next edition, abruptly reminding us how fragile our ecosystem is. 

Then we spent so many nights thinking how they did us wrong.

Dumped and ghosted at a critical moment.

 Bastardness has never been about pretending, hiding, or glamourising vulnerability. Bastards arise from complexity, systemic struggles, dissensus and multiplicity. It is about sidelined singularities. 

You think we’d crumble? 

Well, after tons of team-grieving, hours of incomprehension and self-questioning, the precious side of a heartbreak finally showed up: the energy to reinvent ourselves and the vitality emerging from new alliances.

We kept thinking we could never live without you by our side. 

And so we’re back. From outer space.  

These editions are proud to doubt, to use insecurity as a strategy, to play on the sideline of the field, to (loudly) climb the stairs when cast out from the lift. 

Get ready for a full-on unspectacular festival, with no premiere politics, no big players, no fake love, no polishing the rust. We’ll open-source our unfinished notebooks, unsaved drafts, missing attachments and survival auto-theory.  

Bastards will endlessly morph, from solids to liquids, yelling hello from the other side,  choosing to appear twice rather than disappearing. 

We can’t wait to feel you again, this time in full capacity, hugs and dance allowed and encouraged, without scanning any sort of (un)safe ticket. 

Don’t miss us any longer,

Bastardly yours, 

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Global Majority/
BIPOC separatist evening

The show on the first evening (15th April) is a separatistic evening for people of the global majority/BIPOC. So please only book that evening if you identify with those terms. The show on the 16th of April is open for all. ---- We, Adam and Amina Seid Tahir, see how the terms BIPOC and people of color are less fortunate in their attempts of combating white supremacist andimperialistic ideologies, since they form in relation to whiteness (those ”not of color”) and therefore keeps whiteness as the norm. We rather use the term people of the global majority since we aren’t interested in identifying in relation to whiteness or white supremacy. ---- The term Global Majority was coined by Rosemary Campbell-Stephens. ”Global Majority refers to people who are Black, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or have been racialised as 'ethnic minorities’.” 1 This term was created for people of the global majority to not have to identify in relation to whiteness and to emphasize the fact that these groups make up the majority of the world’s population, specifically 80%. ---- The reason for choosing to use the term BIPOC despite this, is because we’re aware that the term people of the global majority hasn’t received as widespread attention yet. And since our main goal for this showing is to welcome our siblings from the global majority for a showing without the presence of a white colonial gaze, we choose to use the term that seems to be most commonly used in this festivals locality. ---- 1. Global Majority; Decolonising the language and Reframing the Conversation about Race” by Rosemary Campbell-Stephens, 2020