New Museum (5th Floor)
August 4 — September 26, 2010
235 Bowery
New York, NY
The Bidoun Library Project at the New Museum is a highly partial account of five decades of printed matter in, near, about, and around the Middle East. Arrayed along these shelves are pulp fictions and propaganda, monographs and guidebooks, and pamphlets and periodicals, on subjects ranging from the oil boom to the Dubai bust, the Cold War to the hot pant, Pan-Arabs to Black Muslims, revolutionaries to royals, and Orientalism to its opposites.
Most of the 700-odd titles on display were acquired specifically for this exhibition. The shape of the collection was dictated primarily by search terms on the World Wide Web rather than any intrinsic notion of aptness or excellence. Searching for “Arab,” “paperback,” “1970s,” and “<$3,” we acquired dozens of books about the Oil Crisis, the cruel love of the Sheikh, and the lifestyles of the nouveau riche. A similar search for “Iran” produced its own set of types and stereotypes. We did not set out to find the best books about, say, the Iranian revolution; in a sense, we looked for the worst. Or, rather, we tried to look at what was there.
The result is less a coherent group of titles or texts than an assortment of books as things, sorted roughly into four themes or units. Catalogues hang from the ceiling in front of each shelf cluster. Inside is a documentation of a selection of books from that shelf, in dialogue with excerpted texts and images from the library as a whole.
The Bidoun Library includes a program of Iranian film, video, and television culled from low-fidelity DVDs and VHS tapes that circulate among Iranians in the Diaspora. The selection includes post-revolutionary variety shows, music videos, and other totems of middlebrow—unibrow?—culture. This is an Iranian cinema unlikely to be shown at Lincoln Center.
New Museum (5th Floor)
August 4 — September 26, 2010
235 Bowery
New York, NY
The Bidoun Library Project at the New Museum is a highly partial account of five decades of printed matter in, near, about, and around the Middle East. Arrayed along these shelves are pulp fictions and propaganda, monographs and guidebooks, and pamphlets and periodicals, on subjects ranging from the oil boom to the Dubai bust, the Cold War to the hot pant, Pan-Arabs to Black Muslims, revolutionaries to royals, and Orientalism to its opposites.
Most of the 700-odd titles on display were acquired specifically for this exhibition. The shape of the collection was dictated primarily by search terms on the World Wide Web rather than any intrinsic notion of aptness or excellence. Searching for “Arab,” “paperback,” “1970s,” and “<$3,” we acquired dozens of books about the Oil Crisis, the cruel love of the Sheikh, and the lifestyles of the nouveau riche. A similar search for “Iran” produced its own set of types and stereotypes. We did not set out to find the best books about, say, the Iranian revolution; in a sense, we looked for the worst. Or, rather, we tried to look at what was there.
The result is less a coherent group of titles or texts than an assortment of books as things, sorted roughly into four themes or units. Catalogues hang from the ceiling in front of each shelf cluster. Inside is a documentation of a selection of books from that shelf, in dialogue with excerpted texts and images from the library as a whole.
The Bidoun Library includes a program of Iranian film, video, and television culled from low-fidelity DVDs and VHS tapes that circulate among Iranians in the Diaspora. The selection includes post-revolutionary variety shows, music videos, and other totems of middlebrow—unibrow?—culture. This is an Iranian cinema unlikely to be shown at Lincoln Center.
July 27, 2010
Bidoun Library & Project Space @ 98 Weeks
On display until May 15, 2010!
98 Weeks Project Space, Ground Floor, Chalhoub Building, Off Nahr Street, Facing Spoiler Center, Before Jisr Hadid, Mar Mikhael
The 98 Weeks Project Space is open daily from 3pm to 7pm, except on Sundays.
April 30, 2010
Bidoun Library & Project Space @ 98 Weeks
April 17 – May 15, 2010
98 Weeks Project Space, Ground Floor, Chalhoub Building, Off Nahr Street, Facing Spoiler Center, Before Jisr Hadid, Mar Mikhael
Opening: Saturday April 17, 5pm, with readings by Bidoun contributing editors and writers Shumon Basar and Wael Lazkani and a conversation with the comics’ collective Samandal.
Debate: Saturday May 8, 5pm, with a panel including Abboudi Abou Jaoude of Al-Furat Publishers.
This iteration of the library coincides with the launch of 98 Weeks’ new research project on avant-garde journals and popular magazines stemming from moments of modernity in the Arab world. 98 Weeks’ collection of publications will be on permanent display at the 98 Weeks Project Space.
The 98 Weeks Project Space is open daily from 3pm to 7pm, except on Sundays.
April 13, 2010
Curated by Negar Azimi and Babak Radboy for Bidoun
With Vartan Avakian, Steven Baldi, Walead Beshty, Haris Epaminonda, Media Farzin, Marwan, Yoshua Okon, Babak Radboy, Bassam Ramlawi, Mounira Al Solh, Andree Sfeir, Rayyane Tabet, Lawrence Weiner, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck
11th December 2009 – 6th February 2010
Vartan Avakian
Wall text, Walead Beshty
Rayayne Tabet, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck and Media Farzin
Lawrence Weiner, Babak Radboy
More images at Sfeir-Semler.
Read review in NOW Lebanon: Make some NOISE Sfeir’s show challenges the idea of art galleries by Lucy Fielder
December 31, 2009
Sekigun-PFLP: Sekai Senso Sengen
(The Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War)
Masao Adachi & Kôji Wakamatsu
Japanese and Arabic with English subtitles
1971, 70 min
Co-edited by Red Army (Red Army Faction of Japan Revolutionary Communist League) and PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine)
In 1971, Koji Wakamatsu and Masao Adachi, both having ties to the Japanese Red Army, stopped in Palestine on their way home from the Cannes festival. There they caught up with notorious JRA ex-pats Fusako Shigenobu (see “Jasmine on the Muzzle,” Bidoun 17 Flowers) and Mieko Toyama in training camps to create a newsreel-style agit-prop film based off of the “landscape theory” (fûkeiron) that Adachi and Wakamatsu had developed. The theory, most evident at work in A.K.A. Serial Killer (1969), aimed to move the emphasis of film from situations to landscapes as expression of political and economical power relations.
In 1974 Adachi left Japan and committed himself to the Palestinian Revolution and linked up with the Japan Red Army. His activities thereafter were not revealed until he was arrested and imprisoned in 1997 in Lebanon. In 2001 Adachi was extradited to Japan, and after two years of imprisonment, he was released and subsequently published Cinema/Revolution [Eiga/Kakumei], an auto-biographical account of his life.
Watch The Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War on UbuWeb
December 26, 2009
NOISE
Curated by Negar Azimi and Babak Radboy for Bidoun
December 9, 2009 – February 6, 2010
BEIRUT – From the din of cultural initiatives, exhibitions, symposia, biennials, group shows, and surveys mounted to confront, mediate, meditate, cross-pollinate, advocate, decry, valorize, deny, expose, represent, reconsider, reappraise, reify, or, better yet, to re-unveil what it means to make, show, and sell art in the Middle East, Bidoun magazine responds with NOISE, an exhibition opening December 9 at the Sfeir-Semler Gallery in Beirut. — CONTINUE READING
November 2, 2009
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