Bidoun

Myriam Boulos, *Family First*, 2020. Courtesy the artist

Dear Friends,

Like many of you, we were consumed by news of the August 4 explosion that ripped through Beirut, a city already in the midst of a political and economic crisis of mind-boggling proportions. The need for help remains urgent. We’ve asked friends and colleagues to send on the names of Lebanese organizations working across multiple sectors that could use donations of all sizes. While this list of both scrappy and long-established groups is by no means exhaustive, it offers a start. Please do consider engaging with one or more of these initiatives; even the littlest amount goes a long way.

–Bidoun

Arts & Culture
Arab Image Foundation
Ashkal Alwan
Assabil Association
Beirut Art Center
Beirut Musicians’ Fund
Beirut Theatre and Music Fundraiser
Haven for Artists and Music
Mina Image Center
Studio Safar
Sursock Museum

Domestic Workers
Egna Legna
This is Lebanon

Food/Humanitarian
Arc en Ciel
Arm Lebanon
Beit-beit
Beit El Baraka
Impact Lebanon
Lebanese Food Bank
Matbakh el Balad
Nation State
Offre Joie
Queer Relief Fund

Refugees, Migrant Workers
Al Najdeh
Al Naqab Center for Youth Activities
Migrant Community Center
Sawa for Development and Aid

Rude Pieties: Six Glimpses of Hervé Guibert

A possible epitaph? Better to remain hungry than to renounce appetite.

Moyra Davey, Lia Gangitano, Bruce Hainley, Hedi El Kholti, Wayne Koestenbaum, Christine Pichini, Janique Vigier

Phoneme Riot: A Conversation with Nour Mobarak

The work of Los Angeles–based artist Nour Mobarak can be understood as an open-ended engagement with the promiscuous and constitutive power of words.

Jace Clayton

General Behavior

When two gooms get each other.

Farah Al Qasimi

South of Nothing: The Photographs of Soham Gupta

When life’s hard, time’s a motherfucker.

Sukhdev Sandhu

Exhibitions

Reza Abdoh

Presented at MoMA PS1 and KW Institute for Contemporary Art

Abdoh’s theatrical works — produced by an artist literally racing against time while dying of AIDS — never shied from the hard things.

Blasted: On Reza Abdoh’s Tight Right White

He ate camp and shat punk, his style a fizzing intestine stuffed with culture’s slime and scraps.

Tobi Haslett

Bidoun Mix 5: Meriem Bennani

Low-key evil

Meriem Bennani, Tiffany Malakooti

We Are The Lines of Control: Unraveling Naeem Mohaiemen

Like a kite catching thermal winds.

Skye Arundhati Thomas

Matter and Mind

As a child in Tehran, the artist Shirin Sabahi took weekly painting classes not far from Park-e Laleh, or tulip park, in the sprawling city center.

Shirin Sabahi

Bidoun Mix 4: Ma’an Abu Taleb

Ma3azefizm

The Night Journey of Ahmed Bouanani

In the stillness of the house at Aït Oumghar there are ghosts of cats.

Anna Della Subin

Book of Judges: Larry David and the War on the War on Comedy

The war of all against all against nothing

Gary Dauphin

Sweet Talk: A Conversation with Thuraya Al-Basqsami and Monira Al Qadiri

I feel like there’s a forest inside me, full of vegetation. Like a bowl of tabbouleh.

Monira Al Qadiri, Thuraya Al-Baqsami

Louvre Me Tender

Soft power plays

Rahel Aima

Bidoun Mix 3: Ghazal

Mix Suedi

Tiffany Malakooti

The Video People

1990s VHS Tehran Cinephiliacs

Media Farzin

Bidoun Mix 2: Deena Abdelwahed

FutureArab/ClubSounds

Soft Dramaturgy: A Conversation with Lukas Duwenhögger, Part II

Precluding the indifferent, eradicating void and uninspiring vastness of, for instance, sunsets.

Bruce Hainley, Lukas Duwenhögger

Soft Dramaturgy: A Conversation with Lukas Duwenhögger, Part I

I hope these words make you cry.

Bruce Hainley, Lukas Duwenhögger

Mary Boone is Egyptian

“I find the whole notion of celebrity embarrassing.”

Gini Alhadeff

Ghariba

Love and romance, dating and friendship, loneliness and community, all set against the terror of aging.

Meriem Bennani

Bidoun Mix 1

Post-(((Persian))) Happy Softcore

Bidoun

Collection

What do you mean, Here we are?

Conversations from Egypt

Hair

#3, Winter 2005

The sweetest taboo.

The Particular Believer: Nawal El Saadawi

A conversation with Nawal El Saadawi, activist, feminist, writer, doctor.

Bidoun

Condoleezza Rice’s Ice Skates

For all her storied achievements, there is a sense that what Condi Rice became was a well-heeled warning to prodigies everywhere.

Peter James Hudson

Children of War: Kuwait

Fatima Al Qadiri and Khalid Al Gharaballi were kids when Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. In January 1991 an American-led coalition initiated Operation Desert Storm with airstrikes on Iraqi army positions in both countries.

Fatima Al Qadiri, Khalid Al Gharaballi