Friday, May 18 at 7pm
155 Freeman Street, Brooklyn, NY
$5 suggested donation

A celebration of the publication of Bidoun #26, Soft Power, hosted by Triple Canopy at 155 Freeman

Featuring a conversation between Iman Issa and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, readings by Anand Balakrishnan and Michael C. Vazquez, and music by Tiffany Malakooti

———————————————————————————————

Join us in celebrating the twenty-sixth issue of Bidoun, which considers art and patronage, state-sponsored media, cultural diplomacy, revolution and counterrevolution, nation and/or corporate branding, and potato chips as public relations.

Artist Iman Issa will discuss monuments and mysteries, among other things, with Bidoun contributing editor Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, who writes about Issa in “Radical Subtraction.” Issa’s work, which was part of the recent New Museum Triennial, “The Ungovernables,” creates an eloquent language of forms to address unruly questions about place, power and memory.

Writer Anand Balakrishnan will read from his story “The Serendipity of Sand,” which ponders the ultimate civilizational soft-power gambit — the monumental ruin — and what that might have to do with the zebra’s beguiling stripes.

Bidoun senior editor Michael C. Vazquez will present outtakes from his essay “The Bequest of Quest,” which contemplates the curious legacy of Cold War magazines funded by the American CIA, including the Indian literary magazine Quest and the African journal Transition.

A slide show of covers of nation-state self-help books, drawn from Shumon Basar and Parag Khanna‘s article “Soft Readers Prefer Hard Covers,” will be shown.

Throughout the evening, Bidoun’s Tiffany Malakooti will play Iranian wedding trance and Lebanese happy softcore.

Join the Facebook event!

The new Bidoun, on newsstands in April, considers art and patronage, state-sponsored media, cultural diplomacy, revolution and counterrevolution, nation and/or corporate branding, and even potato chips as public relations.

The heart of Soft Power is a suite of conversations that revolve around the question of hidden agendas. As’ad AbuKhalil, the political scientist who blogs as The Angry Arab, discusses the political economy of Al Jazeera and Qatar’s foreign policy with Babak Radboy and E. P. Licursi. Bangalore-based Achal Prabhala and Michael C. Vazquez consider the curious legacy of Cold War magazines funded by the American CIA. And nearly a dozen leading figures in the Egyptian cultural scene, including representatives of human rights organizations, art spaces, and foundations, as well as bloggers, activists, and curators, were invited to reflect on the theme of foreign funding.

But there is Bidoun’s customary dose of long-form narrative, as well. In “The Marble Lawn,” Yasmine El Rashidi provides an unusual vantage onto Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabi heavy in so many stories about the rise of Islamism in post-revolutionary Egypt. Anand Balakrishnan’s “The Serendipity of Sand” considers the ultimate civilizational soft-power gambit — the monumental ruin — and what that might have to do with the zebra’s beguiling stripes. Other features consider sexual politics in the art world (Sarah Rifky’s “Call Me Soft,”) the deification of power (Anna Della Subin’s “Occupy Godhead”), and the rarified world of globo-pundits whose airport-ready books make tidy work of explaining… more or less everything (“Soft Readers Prefer Hard Covers,” by Shumon Basar with Parag Khanna).

In our arts coverage, Kaelen Wilson-Goldie profiles New York-based artist Iman Issa, we take a look at Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s Freedom of Speech Itself at The Showroom in London, and Beiruti Franziska Pierwoss’s ongoing Toyota to Benz project.

Plus: “The Chibsi Challenge,” a taste-travel roundtable discussion of potato crisps, chips, and nation brands, inspired by Sophia Al-Maria; reviews of the archaeology show at SALT Istanbul’s new space; Iranian videos in New York; Haris Epaminonda’s “Mystery at MoMA”; the Athens Biennial in a time of austerity; and Mahmoud Darwish’s bequest.

To purchase this issue — or better, to subscribe — visit our online shop.

Bidoun’s Facebook page has been liberated from its state of limbo and is once again active. We have a lot of lost time to make up for; expect many photos and updates in the coming weeks.

Bidoun on Facebook!

Bidoun seeks a few good interns in its New York City offices!

Interns will be assigned to one or a combination of the following areas: magazine distribution, research related to Bidoun magazine or ongoing projects (such as the Bidoun Library), archiving, production, and beyond.

We seek special interns in three fields in particular:

Development
Publicity
Visual Arts

Interns who could work for a minimum of 3 months will be privileged.

Send cover letter outlining interests and CV/resume to info@bidoun.org with subject header BIDOUN INTERN.

Bidoun will be on display this weekend as part of Shashin Art Bookshop‘s table in addition to a presentation by Tiffany Malakooti on the Bidoun Library and BubuWeb projects.

For more information visit: http://www.amsterdamartbookfair.com

The Bidoun Library is seeking manifestations of the Revolution of January 25th in magazines, newspapers, books, and miscellaneous printed matter. We do not seek a complete and democratic collection of everything printed just ahead, during and after the 25th, nor of the best, most insightful, or lucid accounts in print, but printed materials which are more than anything else OBJECTS, necessitated, transformed or intervened upon by the continuing revolution.

In our experience, this approach tends to produce two types of documents: first, there are materials which are produced to meet new needs or markets among the public, or by new channels of distribution and socialization opened by an event. In general these are materials that would not have existed before these events and may not exist after. This could include newspapers and leaflets produced in, during, and for the demonstrators in Tahrir, for example, or hastily produced commemorative magazine issues or books produced directly after.

Another prime site of the material manifestation of an event often appears in the ways it is refracted in existing modes of cultural production. For example the way the revolution appears in teen and celebrity magazines, advertisements, sports papers, occult and conspiratorial pamphlets, romance novels, comic books, children’s books, auto decals and stickers, trade journals, pop-political analysis, hastily produced biographies of presidential hopefuls, yellow pages, real estate and travel guides, and so on.

———————————

The Bidoun Library is a peripatetic collection of printed materials from and about the ‘Middle East,’ as a product and producer of printed materials. It has traveled extensively throughout the region, from Abu Dhabi to Beirut to Cairo. This summer the Library will spend several months at the Serpentine Gallery in London. All materials donated to the library will be credited and all purchases on its behalf compensated, by arrangement with its librarians. Upon request, Bidoun will return materials after documentation.

Email info@bidoun.org with queries. Though this is an ongoing project, any materials sent to us by the first week of May would be helpful as potential inclusions in the summer issue of Bidoun. Materials could be dropped off at the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, 1st floor.

the true tale of the Naga Jolokia

And so we set out to find the most improbably compelling figures in the wide world of sports. Like Mohammad Khordadian, the elusive, effusive god-king of Persian dancercise, whose thirty-year career spans Tehran and Tehrangeles and Dubai. Like Omar Sharif, smoldering star of stage and screen and roving ambassador for the not-yet-Olympic sport of Bridge. Like Nada Zeidan — archeress, spokesmodel, and road-racer by day, emergency room nurse by night. Like Shah Rukh Khan, the Muslim face of Bollywood cinema and owner of his own cricket team, the Kolkata Knight Riders. Like Stephen Cherono and other Kenyan long- and middle-distance runners who have found infamy and fortune as Arabized athletes in the Gulf.

Other features consider avian sports medicine, intramural three-legged racing, competitive Magic: The Gathering, and transcripts from Iranian state television’s #1 sports show.

In the arts section: Neil Beloufa’s ghosts of futures past, Alvaro Perdices’ ruined Algerian museums, and Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc’s tricontinental revolutionary séance.

Revews: Nicky Nodjoumi // Karthik Pandian // Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art // Pouran Jinchi // Decolonizing Architecture // Walid Raad // Mounira Al Solh // Wael Shawky.

Plus: Sohrab Mohebbi’s letter from an Iranian soccer pitch, Dave Tompkin’s encounter with electronic music pioneer Hashim, and red velvet cake with Yemeni-American boxer Saddam Ali.

Here — but not yet there — stay tuned!

Last year, we began the process of becoming a non-profit organization, to be known, officially, as Bidoun Projects. Today, Bidoun needs you more than ever. As we transition to non-profit status, Bidoun is at a critical point in its life — we need the support of readers like you to sustain our diverse activities. We have an immediate and urgent objective to raise $200,000 to take us into the new year. Our long-term goal is to create an endowment that will sustain us into the future. We can’t do it without you.

For each donation, we have a designed a unique set of benefits and gifts, starting from FOB (Friend of Bidoun) at the $50 level, to higher levels. Click here to see those benefits and make your contribution to Bidoun.

Nazlee Radboy’s contribution to Bidoun 16: KIDS is the “Best American Letter to the Editor,” according to the 2010 edition of the Best American Nonrequired Reading series, edited by Dave Eggers. Click here to read Nazlee’s letter.