New Museum (5th Floor)
August 4 — September 26, 2010
235 Bowery
New York, NY
The Bidoun Library Project at the New Museum is a highly partial
account of five decades of printed matter in, near, about, and
around the Middle East. Arrayed along these shelves are pulp
fictions and propaganda, monographs and guidebooks, and
pamphlets and periodicals, on subjects ranging from the oil boom
to the Dubai bust, the Cold War to the hot pant, Pan-Arabs to
Black Muslims, revolutionaries to royals, and Orientalism to its
opposites.
Most of the 700-odd titles on display were acquired specifically
for this exhibition. The shape of the collection was dictated
primarily by search terms on the World Wide Web rather than any
intrinsic notion of aptness or excellence. Searching for “Arab,”
“paperback,” “1970s,” and “<$3,” we acquired dozens of books
about the Oil Crisis, the cruel love of the Sheikh, and the
lifestyles of the nouveau riche. A similar search for “Iran”
produced its own set of types and stereotypes. We did not set
out to find the best books about, say, the Iranian revolution;
in a sense, we looked for the worst. Or, rather, we tried to
look at what was there. The result is less a coherent group of
titles or texts than an assortment of books as things, sorted
roughly into four themes or units. Catalogues hang from the
ceiling in front of each shelf cluster. Inside is a
documentation of a selection of books from that shelf, in
dialogue with excerpted texts and images from the library as a
whole. The Bidoun Library includes a program of Iranian film,
video, and television culled from low-fidelity DVDs and VHS
tapes that circulate among Iranians in the Diaspora. The
selection includes post-revolutionary variety shows, music
videos, and other totems of middlebrow—unibrow?—culture. This is
an Iranian cinema unlikely to be shown at Lincoln Center.
New Museum (5th Floor)
August 4 — September 26, 2010
235 Bowery
New York, NY
The Bidoun Library Project at the New Museum is a highly
partial account of five decades of printed matter in, near,
about, and around the Middle East. Arrayed along these shelves
are pulp fictions and propaganda, monographs and guidebooks,
and pamphlets and periodicals, on subjects ranging from the
oil boom to the Dubai bust, the Cold War to the hot pant,
Pan-Arabs to Black Muslims, revolutionaries to royals, and
Orientalism to its opposites.
Most of the 700-odd titles on display were acquired
specifically for this exhibition. The shape of the collection
was dictated primarily by search terms on the World Wide Web
rather than any intrinsic notion of aptness or excellence.
Searching for “Arab,” “paperback,” “1970s,” and “<$3,” we
acquired dozens of books about the Oil Crisis, the cruel love
of the Sheikh, and the lifestyles of the nouveau riche. A
similar search for “Iran” produced its own set of types and
stereotypes. We did not set out to find the best books about,
say, the Iranian revolution; in a sense, we looked for the
worst. Or, rather, we tried to look at what was there. The
result is less a coherent group of titles or texts than an
assortment of books as things, sorted roughly into four themes
or units. Catalogues hang from the ceiling in front of each
shelf cluster. Inside is a documentation of a selection of
books from that shelf, in dialogue with excerpted texts and
images from the library as a whole. The Bidoun Library
includes a program of Iranian film, video, and television
culled from low-fidelity DVDs and VHS tapes that circulate
among Iranians in the Diaspora. The selection includes
post-revolutionary variety shows, music videos, and other
totems of middlebrow—unibrow?—culture. This is an Iranian
cinema unlikely to be shown at Lincoln Center.
July 27, 2010
April 7, 2010, 6:30 PM
NYU Abu Dhabi Institute: 19 Washington Square North, New
York
What does the future hold? Speculations on the political,
economic and social future of the Middle East are common in
many spheres. Political economists Kiren Aziz Chaudhry and
Saskia Sassen join Mishaal Al Gergawi, curator and critic,
for an informed discussion, building on each other’s
perspectives to propose potential directions for regional
developments with implications for arts and education
internationally.
This event is part of
Romanticide: Love, Loss and Co-dependency in Art and
Cultural Politics, a NYU Abu Dhabi Lecture Series in New York City
co-sponsored by Bidoun.
April 2, 2010
March 10, 2010 at 6:30 PM
NYU Abu Dhabi Institute: 19 Washington Square North, New
York
After insistent vague realizations (signs of consciousness
or merely the platitude of self-serving delusion?) the
artist investigates: the normalizing institution and its
stifling horizons; the relationship between value and
aesthetics; willful misreadings by 101 critics; the
charged moments of transactions and loss; and last but not
least the artist’s secret anger–the drama and its
pleasure.
This event is part of
Romanticide: Love, Loss and Co-dependency in Art and
Cultural Politics, a NYU Abu Dhabi Lecture Series in New York City
co-sponsored by Bidoun.
March 9, 2010
February 10, 2010 at 6:30 PM
NYU Abu Dhabi Institute: 19 Washington Square North,
New York
Historian Omnia El Shakry outlines
recent trends in contemporary artistic production in and
about the Middle East, while critically exploring the
prevalence of binary understandings of the region as
trapped between local ethno-nationalisms and global
neo-liberalisms, or between politics and aesthetics.
Omnia El Shakry Associate Professor of
History, University of California Davis
This event is part of
Romanticide: Love, Loss and Co-dependency in Art
and Cultural Politics, a NYU Abu Dhabi Lecture Series in New York City
co-sponsored by Bidoun.
February 8, 2010
FOXP2
Wednesday, January 27th at 6:30 PM
NYU Abu Dhabi Institute: 19 Washington Square North,
New York
Please join Bidoun and NYU Abu Dhabi next Wednesday
for FOXP2, an event moderated by Clare Davies. FOXP2
is a dérive in the spatial and mental
fields usually ascribed to a lecture. Constantly
shifting back and forth between the authorial voices
of a politician, a naturalist, and an art historian,
the lecturer drifts between the passionate and the
irrational, stopping at various stations of
historical, artistic, socio-political, and personal
significance. This event will include performances
by Bassam El Baroni, Curator, Co-Director of the
Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum and Manifesta
2010; and Kenny Muhammad, known as “the human
orchestra.”
Space is limited. Please RSVP to
19wsn.rsvp@nyu.edu.
This event is part of
Romanticide: Love, Loss and Co-dependency in
Art and Cultural Politics, a NYU Abu Dhabi Lecture Series in New York City
co-sponsored by Bidoun.
January 21, 2010
Wednesday, December 16th at 6:30 PM
NYU Abu Dhabi Institute: 19 Washington Square
North, New York, NY 10011
Please join Bidoun and NYU Abu Dhabi for an
encounter between philosopher Sadik Jalal Al-Azm,
famous for his controversial and censured works on
religion, politics and culture in the Middle East,
and Bilal Khbeiz, an independent poet, essayist and
journalist in exile, bringing both men’s personal
experiences to bear on a discussion of the Arab
intellectual as political, cultural and social
construct.
Space is limited. Please RSVP to
19wsn.rsvp@nyu.edu.
December 15, 2009
The first incarnation of the traveling Bidoun
Library & Project space took place this past
weekend at Abu Dhabi Art. The collection features
over 200 publications (and growing) selected by
team Bidoun; BAS, Istanbul; and Samandal, Beirut.
Listening stations were curated by Bidoun’s Hassan
Khan and Tiffany Malakooti. The space was design
by Dubai-based Traffic with typography by the
Khatt Foundation. Next stop: Art Dubai, March
2010!
Downlaod a PDF of the Bidoun Library catalogue
here.
November 24, 2009
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