This past September we launched our fall issue, LIBRARY, and inaugurated our storefront space with an ice cream social at 47 Orchard Street. LIBRARY, with its collectible cover (each one sporting a unique photograph — get one now, if you haven’t already), also made a big splash at the Frieze Art Fair in London, where editor Negar Azimi moderated a panel on art and politics, and where it was announced that longtime Bidoun collaborator Yto Barrada had been named Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year for 2011.

Meanwhile in Cairo, a version of the Bidoun Library opened at the Townhouse Gallery on October 12 to great fanfare. Contributing Editor Hassan Khan programmed two talks, one by historian Khaled Fahmy on the politics of the archive in Egypt and another by curator Bassem El-Baroni, on the zeitgeist of Egyptian visual culture. Coincidently, Azimi represented the Bidoun Library at a conference on archival practices, also at the Townhouse.

In November, Bidoun took the New York Art Book Fair at PS1 by storm. Tiffany Malakooti and Babak Radboy represented the Bidoun Library Project on a panel entitled “Experimental Libraries and Reading Rooms,” while the magazine hosted a party at the Jane Hotel to celebrate the fair’s opening night.

Bidoun’s ongoing transition to not-for-profit status proceeds apace. Look for us at bidoun.org from here on out. Also and furthermore — if you don’t already, please consider subscribing to the magazine. When you buy a copy on the newsstand, you help the newsstand. When you subscribe, you help us. And now more than ever, we can use your help. If you were thinking about giving that special someone a subscription for Ashura or Hanukkah or Christmas or just because, now would be a great time.

This spring Bidoun will once again descend on the Emirates for Art Dubai — the first under the leadership of former Bidoun editor Antonia Carver. As usual, we will be largely responsible for programming film, video, and music in the Art Park below the fair, and generally lending an irresponsible element to the proceedings.

Also this winter, the inaugural fellow of the Bidoun/Delfina New Writing Residency, Rayya Badran, will undertake her research into how popular culture, specifically Western music, is received, lived, and later theorized among different generations in Beirut.

Finally, we’re delighted to welcome two new contributing editors to our Iranian conspiracy team: Aram Moshayedi and Sohrab Mohebbi. Aram lives in Los Angeles where he is assistant curator of the Gallery at REDCAT and a doctoral candidate in the department of art history at the University of Southern California. Sohrab is a writer and curator based in Brooklyn, New York. He received his MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and was a founding member of 127 band, Tehran. He is currently a curatorial fellow at the Queens Museum of Art.

Welcome to both!

—Team Bidoun