the true tale of the Naga Jolokia, the world’s hottest chili). We were more interested in the apparatus of celebrity and fandom; in the body as commodity; in the mind games and energy drinks and exercise tapes.
And so we set out to find the most improbably compelling figures in the wide world of sports. Like Mohammad Khordadian, the elusive, effusive god-king of Persian dancercise, whose thirty-year career spans Tehran and Tehrangeles and Dubai. Like Omar Sharif, smoldering star of stage and screen and roving ambassador for the not-yet-Olympic sport of Bridge. Like Nada Zeidan — archeress, spokesmodel, and road-racer by day, emergency room nurse by night. Like Shah Rukh Khan, the Muslim face of Bollywood cinema and owner of his own cricket team, the Kolkata Knight Riders. Like Stephen Cherono and other Kenyan long- and middle-distance runners who have found infamy and fortune as Arabized athletes in the Gulf.
Other features consider avian sports medicine, intramural three-legged racing, competitive Magic: The Gathering, and transcripts from Iranian state television’s #1 sports show.
In the arts section: Neil Beloufa ’s ghosts of futures past, Alvaro Perdice s’ ruined Algerian museums, and Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc’s tricontinental revolutionary séance.
Revews: Nicky Nodjoumi // Karthik Pandian // Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art // Pouran Jinchi // Decolonizing Architecture // Walid Raad // Mounira Al Solh // Wael Shawky.
Plus: Sohrab Mohebbi’s letter from an Iranian soccer pitch, Dave Tompkin’s encounter with electronic music pioneer Hashim , and red velvet cake with Yemeni-American boxer Saddam Ali.

Bidoun Projects returns for its fourth year as a project partner of Art Dubai. Our 2011 programming is built around the theme of Sports: competition, stardom, the parody of sports as labor or labor as sports, the art of losing, and sports per se. Our projects include the Art Park, an underground project space for film, video and talks, that features retrospectives 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.
The Bidoun Library returns, 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. ‘The Natural Order’ will include corporate and state publications, as well as magazines and lay-ethnography on the Gulf published in the mid 20th century, when the region was mostly unfamiliar in the West and was becoming a source of great interest with the discovery of oil. The collective Slavs and Tatars will also make a special appearance with a new project and publication dedicated to Molla Nasreddin.
Join us at the fair on March 15th at 5 pm for a special Bidoun Show & Tell in the Art Park and on March 16th as we co-host, with The Third Line, the Sharjah Biennial After Party!
Bidoun Projects thanks the Emirates Foundation for its support in making these initiatives possible.

You can find Bidoun on the rooftop tent of the Independent this March 3 - 6. We will have treats…

http://www.independentnewyork.com/
http://www.thearmoryshow.com

Bidoun is saddened to hear that the young Cairo based artist Ahmed Basiony was killed in the Egyptian protests last Friday.
To all of Bidoun’s many friends in Egypt, we salute you in your battle for justice.
With respect,
Bidoun

This past Sunday Bidoun screened a special hour-long montage for BLVCK AMERICA’S inaugural BLVCK EYE film night at the Ace Hotel in New York. Responding to popular demand, we’ve uploaded it for all to see along with some photos of the screening.
The montage is comprised of shorts and clips from materials which in some manner depict a relationship between Iran and the rest of the world: Farsi in American films, English in Iranian films, French directors commissioned to make films in Iran — even Princess Soraya Bakhtiari’s acting debut in a throwaway Antonioni film.
Click here to see a guide to source films.
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BLVCK AMERICA’s Saheer Umar introduces the BLVCK EYE series

Team Bidoun (Lisa Farjam and child, Babak Radboy, and Tiffany Malakooti) on deck

A scene from The Invincible Six directed by Jean Negulesco. Shot entirely in Iran, the film features Elke Sommer (seen here as a village vixen) along with some marginal Hollywood figures but also includes Iranian cast members (Behrouz Vossoughi) and production team (Fereydoun Hoveyda is credited as a “consultant” and Masoud Kimiai as “assistant director”).


Fielding questions

Sunday, January 30th at 7pm
Liberty Hall at the Ace Hotel
20 West 29th Street, New York
Free!

BLVCK EYE: A five-part film series presented by BLVCK AMERICA
Bidoun will be presenting a montage of some of our favorite off-kilter films from Bubu and beyond, followed by virtual dance lessons from Mohammad Khordadian.
Related: Hito Steyerl In Defense of the Poor Image

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 [email protected]

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 [email protected]