Interview Magazine were big fans of our Dodi & Di lenticular pins at Art Dubai.

Bidoun and the Migrating Forms festival presented a very rare and special screening of Parviz Kimiavi’s 1973 experimental satire, Moghollha (the Mongols).

Moghollha (The Mongols)
Parviz Kimiavi
16mm On Video / 92 min / 1973

Included in Jonathan Rosenbaum’s list of 1000 essential films, Parviz Kimiavi’s The Mongols (1973) is a leftfield satire and sharp commentary on the expanding presence of cinema and television in Iran. The story follows a filmmaker, played by Kimiavi himself and also named Parviz, as he struggles with both his own film and a looming assignment to oversee the installation of a television relay station in the remote province of Zahedan. Imbued by his wife’s thesis work on the Mongol invasion of Iran, Parviz’s anxieties coalesce and materialize in the form of surreal visions in which the origins of cinema are acted out by the Turkomans he hired to play Mongols in his own film. Together with Parviz, we watch as the would-be gang of Mongols wander the desert in search of their director and the answers to their pressing questions about the nature of cinema, all while the forthcoming introduction of television consumes the local village and its inhabitants. Kimiavi fashions a fantastical cinematic space rife with bizarre metaphoric imagery and Godardian references to film-making in order to draw a sarcastic parallel between the Mongol invasion and the hyper-accelerated modernization of 1970s Iran.

Sunday April 19th, 2009 at 4pm
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue, New York
$8 in advance / $10 day-of-show

BIDOUN VIDEO LOUNGE

Bidoun once again hosted the video lounge, a space for video, talks and performances. The lounge was co-designed by Traffic, with typography by the Khatt Foundation, and kindly supported by the Emirates Foundation. Programs included FLOWERS (curated by Bidoun), ME AND HER AND OUR PUNCTUATION MARKS (curated by Christine Tohme), and THE MESSAGE (curated by Sylvia Kouvali).

YTO BARRADA AT BASTAKIYA

Bidoun Projects presented a screening of Yto Barrada’s 2003 film The Magician at the Bastakiya Art Fair.

THE INHABITANTS OF IMAGES: RABIH MROUE

The Inhabitants of Images, a new performance by the celebrated artist/actor Rabih Mroué, co-produced by Bidoun, Ashkal Alwan and Tanzquartier Wien, was presented in the Bidoun Lounge.

FLOWERS POSTERS

Limited edition FLOWERS posters by Yto Barrada, Babak Radboy and Shirana Shahbazi, commissioned by Bidoun and co-produced with the Dubai-based boutique S*uce.

BIDOUN PARTY!

Bidoun and The Third Line hosted a celebration of Sharjah Biennial 9 and Art Dubai week 2009 at the Golf Park at the Hyatt Regency Dubai, featuring Un-drum / strategies of surviving noise, a sound performance by Tarek Atoui (produced by Sharjah Biennial 9).

Sunday April 19th, 2009 at 4pm
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue, New York
$ 8 in advance / $10 day-of-show

Bidoun and the Migrating Forms festival present a very rare and special screening of Parviz Kimiavi’s 1973 experimental satire, Moghollha (the Mongols).
Moghollha (The Mongols)
Parviz Kimiavi
16mm On Video / 92 min / 1973

Included in Jonathan Rosenbaum’s list of 1000 essential films, Parviz Kimiavi’s The Mongols (1973) is a leftfield satire and sharp commentary on the expanding presence of cinema and television in Iran. The story follows a filmmaker, played by Kimiavi himself and also named Parviz, as he struggles with both his own film and a looming assignment to oversee the installation of a television relay station in the remote province of Zahedan. Imbued by his wife’s thesis work on the Mongol invasion of Iran, Parviz’s anxieties coalesce and materialize in the form of surreal visions in which the origins of cinema are acted out by the Turkomans he hired to play Mongols in his own film. Together with Parviz, we watch as the would-be gang of Mongols wander the desert in search of their director and the answers to their pressing questions about the nature of cinema, all while the forthcoming introduction of television consumes the local village and its inhabitants. Kimiavi fashions a fantastical cinematic space rife with bizarre metaphoric imagery and Godardian references to film-making in order to draw a sarcastic parallel between the Mongol invasion and the hyper-accelerated modernization of 1970s Iran.

Bidoun is offering semester-long spring and summer internships. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. Send questions or cover letters and resumes to Ali Heifetz at ali@bidoun.com.

Readings and party with Paper Monument, Cabinet, Pin-Up, and Bidoun
Wednesday April 15, 2009 at 7pm
BookCourt
163 Court Street
Brooklyn, NY
FREE

Bidoun has been nominated for the 2009 National Magazine Awards for General Excellence Circulation under 100,000, and the 2009 Utne Independent Press Award for General Excellence and for Social / Cultural Coverage.

PROVISIONS is an experimental exhibition catalogue/artist’s project, co-published by Bidoun and Sharjah Biennial 9 and designed by The Khatt Foundation. It is the first in a two-book series that reflects the Sharjah Biennial’s particular focus on production and process, documenting all the new work in this year’s Biennial, from conception to realization. Part II is to be published to coincide with Art Dubai in 2010.

BIDOUN VIDEO LOUNGE

Bidoun once again hosted the video lounge, a space for video, talks and performances. The lounge was co-designed by Traffic, with typography by the Khatt Foundation, and kindly supported by the Emirates Foundation. Programs included FLOWERS (curated by Bidoun), ME AND HER AND OUR PUNCTUATION MARKS (curated by Christine Tohme), and THE MESSAGE (curated by Sylvia Kouvali).

YTO BARRADA AT BASTAKIYA

Bidoun Projects presented a screening of Yto Barrada’s 2003 film The Magician at the Bastakiya Art Fair.

**
THE INHABITANTS OF IMAGES: RABIH MROUE**

The Inhabitants of Images, a new performance by the celebrated artist/actor Rabih Mroué, co-produced by Bidoun, Ashkal Alwan and Tanzquartier Wien, was presented in the Bidoun Lounge.

FLOWERS POSTERS

Limited edition FLOWERS posters by Yto Barrada, Babak Radboy and Shirana Shahbazi, commissioned by Bidoun and co-produced with the Dubai-based boutique S*uce.

BIDOUN PARTY!

Bidoun and The Third Line hosted a celebration of Sharjah Biennial 9 and Art Dubai week 2009 at the Golf Park at the Hyatt Regency Dubai, featuring Un-drum / strategies of surviving noise, a sound performance by Tarek Atoui (produced by Sharjah Biennial 9).

Tank.tv screening series at the Tate Modern

Curated by Bidoun’s Negar Azimi, this exhibition attempts to reveal the weight of diverse histories that define the current moment - whether these be manifest in the form of national myth, ritual, architecture or pop culture. The programme includes work from Ziad Antar, Shahryrar Nashat, Rosalind Nashashibi, Yael Bartana, Iman Issa, Hassan Khan, The Atlas Group, Ahmet Ogut and Haris Epaminonda.

She doesn’t think so but she’s dressed for the h-bomb
Curated by Negar Azimi
Sunday 21 September, 15.00 - 16.00
Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern, £5
Information and tickets here

‘Dubai Now’, a program featuring recent work by UAE-based artists and filmmakers Ebtisam Abdulaziz, Lamya Gargash, Nawaf Al Janahi and Waleed Al Shehhi, is included as a projected installation in the exhibition ‘Dubai Next: the Face of 21st Century Culture’ at the Vitra Design Museum. Over the past decade a nascent filmmaking scene has developed in the UAE, spearheaded — in the absence of dedicated film schools and a local industry – by homegrown initiatives such as the Emirates Film Competition and Gulf Film Festival. Groups of young Emirati men and women have produced a substantial body of short films, many of which explore the nature of being ‘local’ in today’s rapidly changing society – a subject rarely debated in the public realm.

Dubai Next is presented by the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority and curated by Rem Koolhaas, Jack Persekian and Bidoun.

June 5-September 14, 2008
The Firestation, Vitra Design Museum, Weil-am-Rhine, Germany

April 19, 2008
Ajram Beach on the Corniche, Beirut

A party to celebrate the end of Home Works IV, the forum organized by Ashkal Alwan.

Music by Philippe Azoury

Organised by Dalila Barkache with the support of Establissement Antoine Massoud

April 8, 2008
The Kitchen, New York

An evening celebrating a triplet of objects culled from the pages of the spring-summer issue.

Writer, film critic and web theorist Gary Dauphin on the Cleaver Sleeve, a revolutionary trouser design (circa 1975) by the soon-to-be-ex-Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver. Bidoun Editor in Chief Lisa Farjam on the secret of her beating heart. Writer Anand Balakrishnan on castrated pop singers, American imperialism, Arab moustaches and the mystery of Naguib Mahfouz’s white linen suit…

March 19-22, 2008
At Art Dubai, Madinat Jumeirah
Touring to the Palestine Art Academy, Ramallah, Palestine (July 2008); Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, UK (August 6, 2008).

At Art Dubai 2008, Bidoun curated and commissioned programs of artists film for a bespoke cinema and a video lounge. Film programs curated by Bidoun, Nav Haq and Tirdad Zolghadr feature work by 20 artists, making up the largest show of video art staged in the Gulf to date. Participating artists include Haluk Akakce, Ziad Antar, Yasmeen Al Awadi, Loulou Cherinet, Chris Evans, Shahab Fotouhi, Matthew Grover, Iman Issan, Nadine Khan, David Maljkovic, Shahyrar Nashat, Rosalind Nashashibi, Yoshua Okon, Hossam El Sawah, Anna Witt, Akram Zaatari.

Located in the Art Park at Art Dubai, the Bidoun Lounge and Cinema was co-designed by local gallery Traffic and Arabic-English typography specialists the Khatt Foundation. The project was kindly supported by the Emirates Foundation.

March 15-31, 2008
At the Creek Art Fair, Bastakiya, Dubai

At the CAF, Bidoun Projects presented a seminal film by Istanbul-based artist Emre Hüner, comprised of exquisitely drawn and animated landscapes that form fantastical future-retro worlds.

May 27-28, 2007
At the International Design Forum, Dubai

Shumon Basar, Antonia Carver and Markus Miessen, co-editors of Bidoun Book WITH/WITHOUT: Spatial Products, Practices and Politics in the Middle East, participated in a discussion with Stefano Boeri and Rem Koolhaas, followed by the launch of With/Without and sister publication Al Manakh.

March 8-10, 2007
Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai

At the DIFC Gulf Art Fair in 2007, Bidoun designed an outdoor lounge on Fort Island at Madinat Jumeirah, showing work by Susan Hefuna, Ala Ebtekar, and Amir H Fallah, and a specially commissioned series of cushions by Dubai-based artists Nadine Kanso, Loreta Bilinskaite, Haig Aivazian, Amna Al Zaabi and Raghda Bukhash.

A booth screened two rolling programmes of video, curated by Bidoun and the Third Line, that included work by Akram Zaatari, Wael Shawky, Ahmet Ogut, Iman Issa and Solmaz Shahbazi, among others. A library included a selection of rare books and magazines on contemporary Arab and Iranian art. Bidoun co-hosted the Collectors’ Night on the opening evening of the fair with Bloomberg.

Sponsored by Bloomberg
With thanks to The Third Line and 9714.

June 29, 2006
‘Fine Print: Alternative Media’ at P.S.1 at Contemporary Art Center, New York
A series of public programs co-organized by P.S.1 with innovative publications from New York and nationwide, including The Believer, Cabinet, Clear Cut Press, Esopus, Influence, The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, Mass Appeal, n+1, The Relay Project, and Topic, as well as Bidoun. Tracking Bidoun presented a talk by artist and geographer Trevor Paglen on the CIA’s use of civilian planes to ‘render’ and ‘disappear’ suspected terrorists. Paglen also took on his recent trip to Kabul on the trail of secret prisons, black sites in the US, as well as what unmarked airplanes can tell us, and what they cannot. Thomas Keenan, head of Bard College’s Human Rights Project, acted as respondent.

April 3, 2006
38 Curzon St London W1J 7TY

A film night curated by Bidoun member Tirdad Zolghadr, featuring works by Hito Steyerl (November), Dirk Herzog (Pelmeni/Blini), Fikret Atay (Lalo’s Story) and Giovanni Carmine and Christoph Buchel (PSYOP).
With thanks to Artschool Palestine

March 29-April 15, 2006

Counter Gallery, London, and touring to The Galleries Show, Extracity, Antwerp, April 20-25, 2006

A series of week-long exhibitions curated by Bidoun in which artists were given carte blanche not only in terms of content, but are also free to behave as artists or curators in absentia.

Week 1: Shirin Aliabadi & Farhad Moshiri: OPERATION SUPERMARKET

A series of posters alongside a small number of supermarket commodities, mixing, in the words of the artists, “poetry with detergent”. The emphasis here is on the commodification of mainstream media traits of the Middle East, but also on a wry parody of the mythical hopes that are still pinned on the commodity itself as a capitalist agent for change.

Week 2: Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige: THE LOST FILM

An absorbing travel narrative recounting the search for a lost film document, alongside an extract from a video by filmmaker and researcher Akram Zaatari, This Day, which peruses persistent Orientalist patterns through the history of desert photography.

Week 3: Faouzi Rouissi

A writer born in Algiers and barely known in the West, Rouissi is appreciated in local circles for his outspoken style and undaunted prose. Living in exile in Paris since 1994, Rouissi travels widely, publishing a wide array of publications ranging from travel guidebooks to critical anthologies of land art, all in his native Kabyli. Here, Rouissi proposes a selection of paintings and drawings focusing on what he terms “the contagious poetics of envy”. His selection includes a work by the SHAHRZAD collective, from the series I Love You But I Don’t Trust You Anymore (2004), plus painter Rachid Izdaman’s Victimes d’extrêmes remords (2005), and photographic works by Solmaz Shahbazi.

With thanks to Carl Freedman and Jo Stella-Sawicka from Counter Gallery.