Visit the Bidoun shop to purchase our special 10 year anniversary tote bags featuring ten little Molla Nasreddins riding the بدون ouroboros donkey, backwards, into the eternal return.
Bidoun at Frieze New York
May 9–12, 2014
Randall’s Island, New York
Stop by our booth this week at Frieze New York to peruse our eclectic printed matter selection, chat with Bidounis, and pick up our brand new 10th anniversary Donkey-Ouroboros-Nasreddin tote bag! :P
Bidoun at the Los Angeles Art Book Fair
January 31– February 2, 2014
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
Bidoun presents Etel Adnan: To look at the sea is to become what one is
Sunday, February 2, 2014, 11:30 am – 12:30 pm
Democracy Forum at the Japanese American National Museum
Across the courtyard from the Geffen Contemporary
Stop by our booth this week at the Los Angeles Art Book Fair and join us Sunday morning for a special screening and reading event to celebrate the forthcoming anthology To look at the sea is to become what one is: An Etel Adnan Reader (Nightboat Books, 2014) starring Bruce Hainley, Hedi El Kholti, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Rijin Sahakian, and Noura Wedell.
The Otolith Group‘s film I See Infinite Distance Between Any Point and Another (2012), shot largely in Adnan’s Paris apartment, centers on a reading of the first chapter of the renowned Lebanese-American artist’s poem, Sea and Fog. The sound of Adnan’s gentle voice, and the quiet but ever present ambient noise in her apartment, create a powerful, meditative atmosphere. If poetry can be understood as a study in constraint, the film, I See Infinite Distance Between Any Point and Another, can be understood as an experiment in concentration and a study of gestures, that speaks of the mobility of language and the movement of the ocean.
Frieze Art Fair
October 17-20, 2013
Regent’s Park, London
Bidoun is back in London for the Frieze Art Fair. Come by the booth, buy rare back issues, say hello to any one of our editors in town, and learn about our exciting plans for the future!
The Bidoun Library at the 2013 Carnegie International
October 5, 2013–March 16, 2014
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
The Bidoun Library is a presentation of printed matter, carefully selected with no regard for taste or quality, that attempts to document the innumerable ways that people have depicted and defined—slandered, celebrated, obfuscated, hyperbolized, ventriloquized, photographed, surveyed, and/or exhumed—that vast, vexed, nefarious construct known as “the Middle East.” The result is banal and offensive, a parade of stereotypes, caricatures, and misunderstandings, all the trappings of the Middle East as fetish: veils, oil, fashion victims; sexy sheikhs, sex with sheikhs, Sufis, stonings; calligraphy, the caliphate, terrorism; Palestinians. We wanted to see what would happen if we put together a library without regard to aptness or excellence; to choose books not for their subjects, but their contexts; not for their authors, but their publishers; not for their qualities, but in their quantities.
THE NATURAL ORDER
“Water was the first type of drilling fluid to be used, but when it became evident that superior drilling fluids could be made when certain clays were added, the art of mud control began.”
Kuwait Oil Company, Crude to Carrier, The Epic of Oil. Kuwait City: Information Department, 1967.
MARGIN OF ERROR
“The life of an immigrant family of three. Having been a violinist, the man is used to play violin when he is alone. The woman is working in an office and the eight-year-old child attends school. The man has problems with his wife. Being in a bad situation the couple can not help each other. But the child is aware of the problems.”
Mohammad Aghili, Hossein Mahini, A Prospect of Iran’s Film in Exile. Gothenburg: FRI Fil, 1993.
HOME THEATER
“Choose Your Own Adventure is the best thing that has come along since books themselves.”
– Alysha Beyer, age 11
“I didn’t read much before, but now I read my Choose Your Own Adventure books almost every night.”
– Chris Brogan, age 13
“I love the control over what happens next.”
– Kosta Efstathiou, age 17
Shannon Gilligan, Choose Your Own Adventure: The Terrorist Trap. New York: Bantam-Skylark, 1991.
A big thank you to all who joined us this past Sunday evening for the Bidoun Benefit Dinner. It was really really fun!
A special thanks to our readers: Chelsea Clinton, Stuart Comer, Lawrence Weiner, Lynne Tillman, Knight Landesman, and Orhan Pamuk & Shirin Neshat; and our host committee: Maria Baibakova, Yto Barrada, Aarthi Belani, Lisa Farjam, Dana Farouki, Coco Ferguson, Princess Firyal of Jordan, Leila Heller, Shirin Neshat, and Sheena Wagstaff.
New York Art Book Fair
September 19–22, 2013
MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave, Queens
Bidoun is taking part in the eighth annual New York Art Book Fair at PS1 this weekend. Come visit, chat, and peruse your favorite Bidoun titles.
The fair begins this Thursday from 6-9 pm and runs through the weekend.
Also! On the final evening of the fair, Sunday the 22nd from 6-9 pm, join us for vodka, music, MFK Fisher’s favorite minestrone soup, and diverse readings on and about FOOD by Bidoun’s Michael C. Vazquez , who joins an illustrious cast including Gini Alhadeff , Clarissa Dalrymple , K8 Hardy , Gaby Hoffmann , Matthew Higgs , Emily Stokes , Lynne Tillman , Nicola Tyson , Wendy Yao , and more. Music by Bidoun’s Tiffany Malakoobideh. Look for signs of the pop-up cafe at the new MoMA PS1 storefront. Organized by Negar Azimi and Pati Hertling.
Bidoun Launch Los Angeles
Sunday August 25, 2013 at 3pm
Ooga Booga 2, 356 S. Mission Road, Los Angeles
Join us for a celebrity-Bidouni-studded event with readings and performances and music and ice cream. Show begins promptly at 3!
Paper Weight — Genre-defining Magazines 2000 to Now
July 7 – October 27, 2013
Haus Der Kunst, Munich
Bidoun is pleased to be part of the exhibition ‘Paper Weight — Genre-defining Magazines 2000 to Now’ at Haus Der Kunst, Munich. Curated by PIN-UP editor Felix Burrichter and designed by Athens-based artist and architect Andreas Angelidakis, the exhibition features BUTT, Candy, 032c, and Sang Bleu among other publications.
Labyrinth of Passion, Pedro Almódovar, 1982
Saturday July 27, 2013 at 2pm
El Charro Espanol
4 Charles Street, New York
Bidoun and Dirty Looks present an afternoon screening of Pedro Almodovar’s second feature film at the legendary Village restaurant El Charro Espanol. Labyrinth of Passion follows scantily disguised but heavily camped-up members of the Iranian royal family in their famous period of limbo following the revolution of 1979 as they are thrust into extravagant plot lines that weave hilariously between historical accuracy and ribald fantasy. “Toraya,” the disgruntled ex-empress is desperate to fertilize herself with royal seed via the young Crown Prince “Riza.” Riza, meanwhile, is busy attempting to cure himself of his homosexuality after falling in love with a nymphomaniac pop star named Sexilia, but his former lover Sadec (played by a young and nubile Antonio Banderas) is secretly a pro-Khomeini guerilla belonging to a group attempting to kidnap him. Plus: full body plastic surgery, doctors, laxatives, and other culturally appropriate themes.
The film’s elliptical Iranian historical connection has been tragically overlooked ― at worst misunderstood to be about a fictional Arab monarchy, and at best, mentioned in passing. Bidoun and Dirty Looks are pleased to host this absolutely essential revisiting of this deliciously queer retelling of an important moment in Iranian history.
We’ve added Yasmine El Rashidi’s heated conversation with Mona Eltahawy and Sukhdev Sandhu’s very English conversation with Jeremy Deller to the website!
May 1, 2013
6:30-8:30pm
NYUAD Downtown Campus, Abu Dhabi
Free and open to the public
Kenneth Goldsmith, founder of UbuWeb, and Bidoun’s Tiffany Malakooti will be presenting an evening of experimental work from the Bidoun-o-sphere, including a variety of historical and contemporary films, music, and radio plays.
Bidoun #28 INTERVIEWS features conversations among Giorgio Agamben, Sophia Al-Maria, Hossein Amanat, Negar Azimi, Omar Berrada, Leland de la Durantaye, Jeremy Deller, Mona Eltahawy, Lisa Farjam, Yasmine El Rashidi, Larry Gagosian, Conner Habib, Yasmine Hamdan, Zahi Hawass, Michelle Kuo, Ursula Lindsey, Navid Negahban, Sukhdev Sandhu, Anna Della Subin, Benjamin Tiven, Michael C. Vazquez and Marina Warner.
The Independent
March 7 – 10, 2013
548 West 22nd Street, New York
http://www.independentnewyork.com
Bidoun is cleaning out overstock!
Visit us on the roof of the Independent and enjoy a free back issue!
Sunday, January 27 at 4pm
MoMA/PS1
4601 21st Street, Long Island City, NY 11101
Free with museum admission
Join the Facebook event
A screening of Jack Kevorkian’s public access television program The Door (30 min); presented by Anna Della Subin
A screening of Shridhar Bapat’s video feedback fantasia Aleph Null (12 min, 1971); presented by Alexander Keefe
Sex talk and group consciousness exercises;presented by Conner Habib
Plus: Transcendental listening in the dome
Jack Kevorkian
Dr. Jack Kevorkian — also known as Dr. Death — was a pathologist, euthanasia activist, poet, composer and instrumentalist. In Bidoun #27 (Diaspora), Anna Della Subin told the profoundly strange story of this child of genocide survivors through his curiously compelling paintings. Here, Subin will introduce_ The Door_, a public access TV show on the nature of consciousness and some “very hazy realms of human existence,” which Kevorkian produced, wrote, and hosted in California in the early 1980s.
Shridhar Bapat
In the late 1960s Shridhar Bapat was a key figure in the emerging video scene. The first video curator at The Kitchen in its most freewheeling period and the “finest feedback camera turner in New York City,” Bapat worked on the New York Avant Garde Festivals, the first Women’s Video Festival, Shirley Clarke’s TeePee Video Space Troupe, and many of Nam June Paik’s major installations before falling out of the scene to live underground; he died, homeless, in 1990. Alexander Keefe reconstructed Bapat’s story in Bidoun #27 (Diaspora). Keefe will be presenting a rare screening of Aleph Null, one of Bapat’s original video compositions — “all these mandalas going all over the place,” in Bapat’s words — created with Charles Phillips in 1971. First shown at the Whitney Museum’s 1971 “Video Tape Special,” Aleph Null was last screened at the Mudd Club in 1981.
Conner Habib
Conner Habib is a writer, philosopher, sex advice columnist, and gay porn star, based in San Francisco. An adherent of Rudolph Steiner’s Anthroposophy, Habib lectures on the Western esoteric tradition. He has been featured in such films as Man Up, Night Maneuvers, and Arabesque 2: From Tales of the Arabian Nights; his essay, “The Virtues of Being an Object,” appeared in Exploring the Edge Realms of Consciousness, edited by Daniel Pinchbeck & Ken Jordan. Anna Della Subin’s conversation with Habib is forthcoming in Bidoun #28 (Interviews).
We are really pleased to announce Bidoun is the proud recipient of a generous grant from the Kindle Project Fund of the Common Council Foundation. The Kindle Project supports “creative thinkers, artists, activists, doers, and paradigm pushers.” It is kind donations like this as well as gifts from individuals and the support from our subscribers that enables us to continue our work.
December 15, 2012 — February 15, 2013
Point Centre for Contemporary Art
Megaron Hadjisavva,
2, Evagorou Street,
1057, Nicosia, Cyprus
For this Cypriot iteration of the Bidoun Library, we are presenting a thematic version of the Library built around espionage, the legacies of state-sponsored publishing, and the cultural Cold War. A site-specific subsection will be built around the assassination of the Egyptian writer Yussef el Sebai — himself the General Secretary of the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Movement among many other roles — at the Hilton Hotel in Nicosia on February 18, 1978.
More on the Bidoun Library
The Point Centre for Contemporary Art website
Friday Late: Record, Reframe, Resist
Friday November 30, 2012 from 6:30 – 10pm
Victoria and Albert Museum
Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL
This Friday evening at the V&A in London, as part of its ongoing investigation of lost and/or neglected cultural artifacts, Bidoun will be presenting a selection of trailers from the little known genre of Iranian-American “B Movies.” Produced mainly in Los Angeles in the years after the revolution, these resolutely un-canonical (and often un-watchable) low budget films feature mainly American casts with a few Iranian actors. They are the direct descendents of filmfarsi, the vernacular B Movie genre that dominated popular Iranian cinema before 1979, and which employed many of the same directors. Of course, with their new locale, language, and themes, much was lost in translation. These films — unlike their Iranian predecessors — have very limited potential for popular appeal.
And yet some of these films were exported to the Third World; others have become cult hits among pulp connoisseurs. Seen together, they shape a bizarre picture of what these diasporic directors once imagined the formula for a successful Hollywood action film to be — including confusing representations of self (ambiguous Middle Eastern villains, terrorists, and belly dancers in varying states of veiling) and hilariously outmoded and offensive representations of others (Arabs, Japanese, African Americans, women).
 Watch trailer on youtube |
Cat in the Cage Tony Zarindast 1978 Directed by Tony (Mohammad) Zarindast, this film stars the undisputed leading man of Iranian film, Behrouz Vossoughi, in his first non-Iranian production. Vossoughi, whose accent must have been too thick for American audiences, is the only actor in the film to have his voice dubbed. The film co-stars Playboy cover girl Sybil Danning (August 1983) and Samson the Cat. |
 Watch trailer on youtube |
Treasure of the Lost Desert Tony Zarindast 1984 Another Zarindast film, this time starring himself as “Eagle,” a freedom fighter from an ahistorical Dubai who must defeat a heroic US Army Green Beret, “Claude Servan,” in order to reach the hidden desert booty he intends to barter for weapons… |
 Watch trailer on youtube |
Hollywood Cop Amir Shervan 1987 The first American production from the legendary trash director Amir Shervan, Hollywood Cop was followed by Samurai Cop, Killing American Style, Gypsy, and Young Rebels. Peter (Petros) Palian, who produced Bidoun favorite An Esfehani in New York (1972), acted as Director of Photography on all of Shervan’s American films, as well as John S. Rad’s Dangerous Men. |
 Watch trailer on youtube |
Terror in Beverly Hills John Myhers 1989 Produced by Moshe Bibiyan and written by his brother Simon, Terror in Beverly Hills also stars Behrouz Vossoughi, this time as a Palestinian terrorist who kidnaps the US President’s daughter. The opening sequence was shot on location in Jerusalem and Persianesque pseudo-Arabic sparkles throughout. |
 Watch trailer on youtube  Watch trailer on youtube |
The Nuclear Baby and 1999 Jalal Fatemi 1990 From the B Movie avant-garde comes Jalal Fatemi’s The Nuclear Baby, a surreal video feature about a pregnant woman navigating a post-nuclear war nation called “Caspiana” while being hunted by a dream terrorist. Although Iran is never named, the village doctor has all the familiar physical trappings of a filmfarsi jaheli character, and the remaining canned goods in this post-apocalyptic world seem to consist mostly of ghormeh sabzi mix and pickles. The short film 1999 is built upon a conceptual framework of bowel-based imagery. A US Marine with digestive problems ponders his past and future while trapped in an oil refinery on the cusp of the new millennium and the discovery of an alternative fuel source. |
 Watch trailer on youtube |
Dangerous Men John S. Rad 2005 It took John S. Rad, aka Jahangir Salehi Yeganehrad, about two decades to patch together Dangerous Men, which is frequently described as completely indescribable. The official tagline promises an unforgettable comedy suspense, mystery drama and Bret Berg of Los Angeles’ Cinefamily passionately crowns it “THE holiest of all holyfuckingshits.” In a 2006 interview with Rad, the director pondered the response of some audiences during the film’s theatrical run: “They laughed, screamed, clapped, and got up and sat down, almost with any scene. I was wondering, some scenes in my opinion were not funny to laugh at or be so excited.” |
