Amsterdam BANGS is NOT a free Fringe Festival. We are not the fringe of the fringe. We are BANGS. Something completely different!

Were we just a free festival, we would just be hyper-exploiting artists and ourselves to deliver a free product to an audience that likely just doesn’t have a lot of money to pay for art. That is one thing to do, but it’s not what we do.

BANGS is a political initiative. Not only do we come from and remain part of the leftist, autonomous movement but we are developing a counter-practice that does not rely on public or private financing of art.

Arts funding is problematic in itself: it prioritises incessant production over community building, and its value is dictated by bureaucrats. That means, publicly financed art needs to be explainable and valuable to those would rather invest in war than art. At the centre of publicly funded art is the public bureaucrat themselves, who will use you as an example of the value of arts funding. The product of arts funding is arts funding. Not art. It’s like how they keep renovating the city streets. They need to spend that money, in order not to lose it. But in today’s political climate, they lost it anyway.

With BANGS, we do not decide for you what is valuable.

Instead of relying on state support and thus state prohibitions, we have each other’s support. Help out by volunteering, offering space, or gifting a performance or a workshop.

All the shows are free but we welcome and encourage any donations. This year, the donations we collect go to support mutual aid in Palestine and Lebanon, without relying on the NGO complex to send aid.

We have sent money to Palestine since the first edition of BANGS. There is no reason to change that. Attention has drifted away from Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians. But we know that Israel cannot exist while Palestine still exists: A settler state is founded on genocide – the erasure of native peoples from the face of the Earth – and it will only cease being perceived as a settler state once that process is done. Look at the U.S.: Most people do not think about it as a settler state. Not because it is not, but because the genocidal founding of the country lies in the past and was so effective that the country has become recognised as legitimate, and with time, normalised – despite indigenous peoples still resisting the U.S. Empire.

BANGS will not contribute to the normalisation of genocide. Gaza is under increased siege even after the peace agreement and remains the largest open air prison of the world. And Israel has not calmed its aggression but expanded its scope. Not only by going to war with Iran but by expanding its occupation of land further into Lebanon.

What has happened for the last few years in Palestine is happening now in Southern Lebanon. Israel is indiscriminately bombing apartment blocks, seizing land, and killing civilians.

Meanwhile, European powers remain silent, or meek at best. But it does not matter: Whoever relied on European leaders to be spokespeople of morality missed a bunch of memos, didn’t come to the action meeting, and misunderstood clown school entirely.

We are not shocked. We are not impressed. We will do the work, our way.

The militarisation of the world does not only take place in occupied territories, but also around us in Amsterdam. Hell, weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems is moving to Amsterdam, which, we have got to be honest, is a clown move. Because we will show them that Amsterdam has no respect for war profiteers and fascists – we don’t even have respect for our liberal mayor.

This year, we will show everyone that no matter how grim it gets, you won’t get us to stop grinning. The city is ours. It belongs to Palestine, to Lebanon, to Muslims, to Anti-Zionists, to Arabs, to Queers, to refugees, to anarchists, to Black folk, to the Mad, to anyone who says