Ebrahim Goelstan, still from Yek Atash (A Fire),
1961
Revolution vs Revolution,
March 14, 26, 28
Beirut Art Center
In the context of Beirut Art Center’s exhibition “Revolution vs
Revolution,” Bidoun’s Tiffany Malakooti presents two curated
film programs around Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979 and Negar
Azimi gives a talk entitled “Iran in Pictures: Social Suffering
and Three Sets of Images.”
Wednesday, March 14, 2012 at 8pm
Ebrahim Golestan, Yek Atash (A Fire), 1961, 24′
Kamran Shirdel, Tehran Is the Capital of Iran, 1966,
18′
Parviz Kimiavi, Ya Zamene Ahu (O Guardian of the Deer),
1970, 20′
Monday March 26, 2012 at 8pm
Kianoush Ayari, Tazeh Nafas-ha (The Newborns), 1979,
45′
Wednesday March 28, 2012 at 8pm
Iran in Pictures: Social Suffering and Three Sets of Images by
Negar Azimi
http://beirutartcenter.org
Saturday, July 30
Samandal Comics
Sackler Centre of Arts Education, 3pm
Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, W2
Hatem Imam, co-founder of Samandal Comics, will host this
week’s Saturday Seminar about this tri-lingual quarterly comic
magazine.
Hatem Imam is a visual artist and designer
whose work includes print media, installation, photography,
video, and painting. In 2007, he co-founded Samandal comics
magazine. He is board member of the 98weeks research project,
the artistic director of the Annihaya record label, and a
founding member of the art collective Atfal Ahdath. Since
2007, he has been teaching at the Department of Architecture
and Design at the American University of Beirut.
Samandal Comics is a Beirut-based magazine
dedicated to comics, with contributors from all over the
world. The goal of Samandal is to provide a platform on which
graphic artists may experiment and display their work,
generating contemporary reading material for comics fans.
www.samandal.org
The Bidoun Library Project is up at the Serpentine from 12
July – 17 September.
Click here
for a complete schedule of Saturday Seminars.
July 28, 2011
Delfina Foundation and Bidoun are pleased to announce that
Rayya Badran has been selected for the Bidoun/Delfina New
Writing Residency, supported by the British Council.
Rayya Badran (b. 1984) is a writer based in Beirut who
focuses on the performative nature of the voice as well as
on characteristics of aurality and music in film and video.
In recent years, her research has explored melancholy in
music. Her first publication entitled
Radiophonic Voice(s) was produced in the framework
of Ashkal Alwan’s Homeworks 5: A forum on cultural practices
in April-May 2010, Beirut. The publication engaged two
radiophonic events recorded and filmed in 2006 during the
Israeli war on Lebanon. Rayya will be in residence in Winter
of 2011 during which time she will research how popular
culture, specifically Western music, is received, lived and
later theorized among different generations in the context
of Beirut.
September 14, 2010
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 29, 2010
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
Saturday May 8th, 5:30pm
Bidoun Library & Project Space @ 98 Weeks
Jisr el Hadid, facing spoiler center, Chalhoub
building, Ground floor, Beirut
Publisher (Al Furat Publishing) and collector Abboudi
Abou Jaoude will present his collection of Lebanese
and regional historical art and cultural magazines
from the 30s to today. Examples of the discussed
magazines will be available for consultation at
98weeks project space.
This event is part of 98weeks’ research,
On publications, and coincides with the
Bidoun Library on display at 98weeks until May 15.
May 7, 2010
Bidoun Library & Project Space @ 98 Weeks
On display until May 15, 2010!
98 Weeks Project Space, Ground Floor, Chalhoub
Building, Off Nahr Street, Facing Spoiler Center,
Before Jisr Hadid, Mar Mikhael
The 98 Weeks Project Space is open daily from 3pm to
7pm, except on Sundays.
April 30, 2010
Bidoun Library & Project Space @ 98
Weeks
April 17 – May 15, 2010
98 Weeks Project Space, Ground Floor, Chalhoub
Building, Off Nahr Street, Facing Spoiler
Center, Before Jisr Hadid, Mar Mikhael
Opening: Saturday April 17, 5pm,
with readings by Bidoun contributing editors and
writers Shumon Basar and Wael Lazkani and a
conversation with the comics’ collective Samandal.
Debate: Saturday May 8, 5pm, with
a panel including Abboudi Abou Jaoude of Al-Furat
Publishers.
This iteration of the library coincides with the
launch of 98 Weeks’ new research project on
avant-garde journals and popular magazines
stemming from moments of modernity in the Arab
world. 98 Weeks’ collection of publications will
be on permanent display at the 98 Weeks Project
Space.
The 98 Weeks Project Space is open daily from 3pm
to 7pm, except on Sundays.
April 13, 2010
Curated by Negar Azimi and Babak Radboy for
Bidoun
With Vartan Avakian, Steven Baldi, Walead
Beshty, Haris Epaminonda, Media Farzin, Marwan,
Yoshua Okon, Babak Radboy, Bassam Ramlawi,
Mounira Al Solh, Andree Sfeir, Rayyane Tabet,
Lawrence Weiner, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck
11th December 2009 – 6th February 2010
Vartan Avakian
Wall text, Walead Beshty
Rayayne Tabet, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck
and Media Farzin
Lawrence Weiner, Babak Radboy
More images at
Sfeir-Semler.
Read review in NOW Lebanon:
Make some NOISE Sfeir’s show challenges the
idea of art galleries by Lucy Fielder
December 31, 2009
Sekigun-PFLP: Sekai Senso Sengen
(The Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World
War)
Masao Adachi & Kôji Wakamatsu
Japanese and Arabic with English
subtitles
1971, 70 min
Co-edited by Red Army (Red Army Faction of
Japan Revolutionary Communist League) and
PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine)
In 1971, Koji Wakamatsu and Masao Adachi,
both having ties to the Japanese Red Army,
stopped in Palestine on their way home from
the Cannes festival. There they caught up
with notorious JRA ex-pats Fusako Shigenobu
(see
“Jasmine on the Muzzle,”
Bidoun 17 Flowers) and Mieko Toyama in
training camps to create a newsreel-style
agit-prop film based off of the “landscape
theory” (fûkeiron) that Adachi and Wakamatsu
had developed. The theory, most evident at
work in A.K.A. Serial Killer (1969), aimed
to move the emphasis of film from situations
to landscapes as expression of political and
economical power relations.
In 1974 Adachi left Japan and committed
himself to the Palestinian Revolution and
linked up with the Japan Red Army. His
activities thereafter were not revealed
until he was arrested and imprisoned in 1997
in Lebanon. In 2001 Adachi was extradited to
Japan, and after two years of imprisonment,
he was released and subsequently published
Cinema/Revolution [Eiga/Kakumei], an
auto-biographical account of his life.
Watch
The Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World
War on UbuWeb
December 26, 2009
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