Art Dubai
March 16-19, 2011

One again Bidoun Projects has been invited to partner with Art Dubai in bringing you a series of non-profit artist projects, screenings, and miscellaneous more with the theme of “SPORTS” — also the theme of our spring issue, to be launched at the fair.
2011 Bidoun Projects include the Art Park, an underground project space for film, video and talks, that features retrospectives of the work of two pivotal Egyptian artists, Sherif El Azma and Wael Shawky, curated by Bidoun’s Kaelen Wilson-Goldie and Sarah Rifky of the Townhouse Gallery, respectively, as well as a sports-themed video programme featuring a variety of artists including Ziad Antar, Mahmoud Hojeij, Van Leo, and Marwa and Mirene Arsenios.
Limited edition Bidoun trading cards will be distributed, too, and autograph sessions will be held throughout the fair featuring leading lights of the contemporary art world. Bidoun also presents a “live mural” painted and repainted each day throughout the fair by a group of distinguished artists — Dubai-based artist Rokni Haerizadeh and Tehran-based Ali Chitsaz among them — tasked with depicting the theme of “labor.”
The peripatetic Bidoun Library is back, too, featuring “The Natural Order,” a new section specially curated for the fair that focuses on printed material on the Gulf from the past five decades.
Also look out for a special appearance by the collective Slavs and Tatars in the Bidoun Library.
Finally, Bidoun Projects will present a special “Show & Tell” evening dedicated to highlighting Bidoun’s diverse activities past and present.

Exhibition: January 11 to February 18, 2011
Video Screeening and Talk: Wednesday January 12 at 6:00pm
The Delfina Foundation
29 Catherine Place, Victoria, London

The Best of Sammy Clark by Raed Yassin
The Best of Sammy Clark (2008) is a tribute to Sammy Clark, a 1980s Lebanese pop music icon and Raed Yassin’s fictive mentor. The installation suggests a contrived genealogy, which links Yassin to Clark, and explores the artist’s personal narrative, as well as the recent history of Lebanon, through the lens of consumer culture and mass production.

Sonic Grounds curated by Rayya Badran
A series of talks and performances throughout January and February 2011. Contributors include Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Mark Fisher, Raed Yassin, and Rayya Badran, the recipient of this year’s Bidoun/ Delfina New Writing Residency.
Sonic Grounds explores the intersection between popular music, radio and writing. The series of events unpacks some of the thoughts that emanate from The Best of Sammy Clark, by expanding the discussion to topics of popular culture, sampling and the politics of aurality in London and Beirut.

Video Screeening: Featuring Mahmoud Yassin
Wednesday 12 January 2011,
 18:00 - 20:00, at The Delfina Foundation.
Four video works by Raed Yassin followed by a conversation between the artist and Rayya Badran. Free event. Rsvp required at rspv@delfinafoundation.com

Visit the Delfina website for more information

Thursday January 13, 2011 at 6:00 pm
Cezayir 2. Toplantı Salonu, Hayriye caddesi No:12, Galatasaray Beyoğlu
(Talk will be in English)

From 1969 through 1994 AA Bronson lived and worked as one of three artists who together formed the group General Idea, dividing his time between Toronto and New York. For 25 years they published a continuous stream of more than 300 low-cost multiples and publications. From 1972 through 1989 they published the artists’ magazine FILE, and in 1974 they founded Art Metropole, a distribution center and archive for artists’ books.
Since his partner’s deaths in 1994, AA Bronson has worked under his own name, focusing on themes of death, healing, transformation, and social justice. His solo exhibitions have included the Vienna Secession, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Power Plant, Toronto.
As the director of Printed Matter from 2004 to 2010, AA Bronson greatly expanded the activities of this centre for artists’ books in New York. He founded the NY Art Book Fair in 2006. He has also curated many exhibitions, especially of artists’ books and other democratic editions. His exhibition “Queer Zines” was presented at the 2008 NY Art Book Fair and traveled from there to OCA in Oslo.
At My Life in Books, AA will talk about the publications by General Idea, FILE magazine, Art Metropole and his recent experiences at Printed Matter, inc.

Read interview with BAS’s Banu Cennetoglu from Bidoun #18 Interviews.

Tuesday November 30, 6:30pm
20 Cooper Square
New York
Directed by Omar Majeed
2009, 80 minutes
Presented by Michael C. Vazquez
NYU’s Program for Asian/Pacific/American Studies presents a screening of Taqwacore as part of its program ‘WRONG MUSLIM: a series on infidels.’ Taqwacore is a roaring, rollicking portrait of Muhammad Knight, The Kominas, and a brown wave of riot grrl, metal, anarcho-punk and shouty-shout bands — among them Vote Hezbollah and Secret Trial Five, the latter fronted by a Pakistani lesbian from Vancouver and best known for their song ‘Middle Eastern Zombies’ — as they travel from suburban basements to Lahore. There the drugs are great, the response from locals slightly less so….

Photos by Ismaël Abdallah and Rosalie Knox

Photos by Joshua Wildman.
Many thanks to Lagunitas, our beer sponsor for the evening.
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Saturday November 6, 2010
11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave
Long Island City, NY

Babak Radboy and Tiffany Malakooti will be representing the Bidoun Library this Saturday morning at a panel discussion on the theme of ‘Experimental Libraries and Reading Rooms’ as part of The Contemporary Artists’ Books Conference at the NY Art Book Fair. Participants include:

Wendy Yao, Ooga Booga;
Andrew Beccone, the Reanimation Library;
Robin Cameron and Jason Polan, the Assembled Picture Library;
Tiffany Malakooti and Babok Radboy, Bidoun Library.
Moderated by Renaud Proch, Independent Curators International (ICI).

Visit the the NY Art Book Fair website for more information or purchase tickets here

Thursday November 4, 9-12 Midnight
The Jane Hotel
113 Jane Street
New York
RSVP REQUIRED rsvp@bidoun.org

Starring Christopher Lopez-Thomas as “The Green Screen Ninja”
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Business Manager Dan DeNorch polishes the head of Christopher Lopez-Thomas (with petty cash)

Still life with Parag Khana

Reza Aslan and his dog “Nick” sit for their Skype portrait

Creative Director Babak Radboy gleams the oblong

Birdwatching with Preston Chaumsilit and Dan DeNorch

Some adjustments

Bidoun intern Ismaël Abdallah works it

Nesa Azimi anxiously awaits (socks: model’s own)

Bidoun hosted an evening at The Kitchen for a second time, in commemoration of our fall 2009 issue, “INTERVIEW,” with added eclectica drawn from the world of our winter issue, “NOISE.” The evening, hosted by senior editors Negar Azimi and Michael Vazquez , featured Tony Shafrazi performing his exotic operatic epic Moogambo, an encounter between writer Gini Alhadeff and writer cum flamenco dancer Hampton Fancher , illustrated readings by Abou Farman ( “True Dub”, Bidoun 19 NOISE) and Bidoun’s own Lucy Raven and Tiffany Malakooti ( “The Lovers’ Wind”, Bidoun 19 NOISE). Musical acts included bumpers by world champion competitive whistler Steve “The Whistler” Herbst and music by $hayne Oliver and Fatima Al-Qadiri.

Review in Art in America

Tony Shafrazi performs Moogambo

Gini Alhadeff and Hampton Fancher

Khalid Al Gharaballi, Babak Radboy and Kai Kuhne

Steve “The Whistler” Herbst

“Babak Radboy is the Eddie Murphy of the Interview magazine of the Middle East”
— Jahan Al Dessari

Bidoun Creative Director Babak Radboy will be speaking tonight at Art in General as part of ArteEast’s Across Histories Lecture Series.

Live Cinema/In the Round: Contemporary Art from the East Mediterranean curated by November Paynter features the works of Ziad Antar, Inci Eviner, Gülsün Karamustafa, Hassan Khan, Maha Maamoun, and Christodoulos Panayiotou, six artists from the Eastern Mediterranean who, in varying ways, explore how the moving image informs representations of reality.

http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/737.html

The Bidoun Video Project 2010 landed in Thessaloniki, Greece on September 11 through October 12, 2010. The programs were curated by Bidoun and guest curators Masoud Amralla Al Ali, Aram Moshayedi, and the duo of Özge Ersoy and Sohrab Mohebbi.
Visit ArtBOX for more information