BASTARD Conference 2023 - call for submissions

The Berkeley Anarchist Study Group will host the 2023 BASTARD Conference on Saturday, November 11 at The Long Haul Infoshop in Berkeley, California. Last year we got a lot of shit for posting so late, so here you go.

BASTARD is an annual gathering of informal, autodidactic conversations and presentations about anarchy. It functions as a forum for participants in the study group as well as accomplices from around the world to share their interests and reflections. We are seeking submissions for this year’s event. A theme for 2023 has not yet been selected, so go ahead and pitch us whatever sounds interesting to you and we’ll see what coalesces in the next few months. Lectures, discussions, performances; we’d like to hear it all.

Email birdsoffire [at] riseup [dot] net with your ideas or drop by the study group Tuesdays from 7:30-9:30pm at The Long Haul (3124 Shattuck Ave in Berkeley) and tell us in person. Submissions by October 1st, please.

http://bastard.noblogs.org

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The Contemptuous have chosen to make one last stand in the anarchist world, from the edge, and spewing into the vacuous space of the anarchist scene. Maybe its our stubbornness, maybe residual remnants of withered romanticism, maybe we just can’t help our joyously deviant selves, maybe its just for shits and giggles, or just maybe in five, ten, twenty, a hundred years from now when the world and its deranged participants play out their sick and deadening game, someone may remember that there actually were a few authentic anarchists out there who fought against it, not just an annoying swarm of leftist drones wearing black and helping it along.

We would like to extend an invitation to the after-party / moist orgy, if you're not a scared leftist.

make one last stand in the anarchist world, from the edge

'We only exist online and are too scared to meet real anarchists but we are very based backseat drivers!'

We would like to participate by offering a flamethrower speedrun workshop. Let us know how much the per diem is unless you're scared leftists.

per diem

What is that, Facebook's crypto currency?

hahaha hahaha hahaha hahaha hahaha!!!

the frayed end of the once quite fun ASG attempts to revivify a moribund event.

Nostalgia FTW.

I've been going to the Study Group for about a year and it has changed my life, I will say without irony. Why assume everything terminates with one's own crusty generation?

people get peevish when they see anarchists continuing to encounter each other and create together while they sit in stuffy rooms comparing things to bygone days when they felt slightly less insignificant. same old story.

people like to talk on shit they don't know about, that's for sure.

i wasn't comparing this to the BASTARD of old because there is no comparing. the BASTARD of old is dead. it was an event for its time and place and that time is gone and that place lies fallow.

to be clear, this other group should do an event, i'm all for it, please create together, write papers and do performance art for yourselves. if you are trying to create something new though, why keep using a format and name that have had their day. everything dies so that new things can come into being, allow your new thing to be itself not a pale copy of what has already been done.

because there’s continuity, both of participants and of spirit. i’ve presented at every BASTARD Conference since 2015, as have other people still involved in putting it on. the idea that anything died bc a few people stopped taking part is merely your nostalgic vantage. we’re still doing the thing; a different form of the thing, but still the same thing. that’s not nostalgia, that’s not death, that’s precisely what it means for something to live.

i think what i am trying to say is you all are the ones with the nostalgia for the name, but i don't need to belabor the point. and it isn't that since *a few* people stopped attending the thing died. it's that *nearly all* the people involved in the first 10 years of bastard are no longer involved.

but, other than being annoyed here, i really don't care what you all do. it's not like I am going to stand with a placard out front trying to persuade attendees one way or the other. but even you say this "we’re still doing the thing; a different form of the thing, but still the same thing." a different form of the thing.... but clinging to whatever shine the name still carries.

From previous bastard events? Thats what would turn me on to something like this, even though there are several i wouldnt go to a Bastard event at berkely.

evil, headlessness, utopia and other science fictions, and excess were all good ones.

Because rebooting something is the new fad. Creating a new conference is out of the question. duh

What happens when someone says something that doesn't go over well with everyone else there. Like here the comment can be deleted, but at a conference you cant delete the comment. Does everyone have a spontaneous 10 minute meeting with the said person that ssaid something? i've read anarchists really like meetings to decide democratically what to do.

I also saw somewhere that Long Haul Infoshop acts similar to how a mole works for the FBI. Yikes that would be scarey.

Aren't you a Maoist, Tim? Or are you the alt-lite one? I can't remember

So I'm a maoist or alt-lite because I wrote Long Haul Infoshop possibly functions similar to a mole for the FBI lol? That's some big brain shit right there and top quality logic. Tell me what Maoism and alt-lite means to you. Hopefully, hilarity will ensue when you describe what you think those buzzwords mean. Maybe explain how my comment gives any indication of Maoism and alt-lite for potentially more hilarity.

who has heard of cointelpro? this sort of speculation (about the long haul) is just the sort of low intensity bs & unsubstantiated rumors that tears apart anything decent. usually fomented by state agents, which of course, tim, you are not right? see how this works?

the long haul is a public space. it has all the pitfalls of any public space, like you can never be 100% sure about all the people using it. but for reals, the lh is too dysfunctional to be of use to the feds and that is its charm, really.

tim is a troll and his comments should be deleted on site. he has contributed nothing to the beautiful idea and is only here to irritate and frustrate.

About any sort of extra-curricular intellectual form like anarchist news etc. If what you are saying is true, it was probably someone reacting to the attassas. Anarchists basically become cops when they start seeing them everywhere. This is why i want nothing to do with anti-fa street actions. I told some guy with anti-fa patches how much i supported him as a way of thanking him for a cigg once, but i think its laughable how that activist theme keeps getting recycled everytime a republican is president.

Anyone who thinks the FBI doesnt care about any and all anarchist websites is fooling themselves...

Participants are hereby informed that everyone must bring their own belly button lint for this belly button lint fingering session.

Please note that masks are suggested while indoors just to make trolls on Anews lose their minds. See you there!

"masks are suggested" is the new passive aggressive "masks are required" in general. is that the case?

hope not.

might come.

and non-conformity about the mask issue is not just an issue for "trolls on Anews". that's absurd.

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