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.

Bidoun Magazine and The Delfina Foundation, with the support of the British Council, are working in partnership to provide a unique residency opportunity in London to support new writing from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and the Palestinian Territories.

In 2010, Bidoun Projects is the curatorial partner of Art Dubai, responsible for programming a series of non-commercial exhibitions, commissions, screenings and educational events that engage with the fabric of the fair.

‘Forms of Compensation’ is a series of 21 reproductions of iconic modern and contemporary artworks, with an emphasis on sculptures, paintings and prints by Arab and Iranian artists. The series was produced in Cairo by craftspeople and auto mechanics in the neighborhood around Townhouse Gallery, commissioned by Babak Radboy and overseen by Ayman Ramadan, working from installation shots of the original artworks, along with the instruction that each copy should differ in one small way from its referent

The programs are launched at Art Dubai (March 17–20, 2010) in the Art Park–an underground space for talks, film and video–and then travel on throughout 2010 to venues in the region and beyond. This year’s programs are curated by Bidoun and guest curators Masoud Amralla Al Ali, Aram Moshayedi, and the duo of Özge Ersoy and Sohrab Mohebbi.

Together with Anthology Film Archives, Bidoun presented an encore screening of Ben Hayeem’s unmissable, unfathomable wonder. Born and raised in Bombay, Hayeem (1933-2004) made a number of well-regarded films and was close with experimental film pioneers Maya Deren and Slavko Vorkapich. Early in his career he joined the Living Theater group in New York and became the only Indian Jew to play a Chinese Priest with a Yiddish accent in a Brecht play. This comedic, cross-cultural experience must have set him down the path to the rather incredible and risque happenings in The Black Banana.

Bidoun Projects, in partnership with the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (Dubai Culture) launches a course of workshops that focus on writing about art and offer the opportunity for critical debate.

From the din of cultural initiatives, exhibitions, symposia, biennials, group shows, and surveys mounted to confront, mediate, meditate, cross-pollinate, advocate, decry, valorize, deny, expose, represent, reconsider, reappraise, reify, or, better yet, to re-unveil what it means to make, show, and sell art in the Middle East, Bidoun magazine responds with NOISE, an exhibition opening December 9 at the Sfeir-Semler Gallery in Beirut.

In November 2009, Bidoun launched a new, monthly exhibition project aimed at highlighting the work of art photographers based in the UAE.

The Bidoun Library is a collection of books, catalogs, journals, and ephemera that traces contemporary art practices as well as the evolution of the various art scenes of the Middle East. This peripatetic new resource had its first outing at Abu Dhabi Art, November 19–22, 2009, and is now being developed as a touring, pop-up resource.

Bidoun hosted an evening at The Kitchen for a second time, in commemoration of our fall 2009 issue, “INTERVIEW,” with added eclectica drawn from the world of our winter issue, “NOISE.” The evening, hosted by senior editors Negar Azimi and Michael Vazquez, featured Tony Shafrazi performing his exotic operatic epic Moogambo, an encounter between writer [...]

Bidoun and Semiotext(e) presented a screening of two rarely shown works depicting outsiders’ visions of Morocco, introduced by celebrated novelist Abdellah Taïa, Morocco’s first openly gay writer, who discussed the fascination that Moroccan literature, landscape and culture have exerted over American expats and travelers.

LACMA’s Wallis Annenberg Photography Department, the Ralph M. Parsons Fund and Bidoun present Another Border – Films and Videos from the Cinémathèque de Tanger Archives at LACMA in Los Angeles this June. The series is co-curated by Bidoun contributor, collaborator and friend, Yto Barrada.

Bidoun and the Migrating Forms festival presented a very rare and special screening of Parviz Kimiavi’s 1973 experimental satire, Moghollha (the Mongols).

Readings and party with Paper Monument, Cabinet, Pin-Up, and Bidoun

PROVISIONS is an experimental exhibition catalogue/artist’s project, co-published by Bidoun and Sharjah Biennial 9 and designed by The Khatt Foundation. It is the first in a two-book series that reflects the Sharjah Biennial’s particular focus on production and process, documenting all the new work in this year’s Biennial, from conception to realization. Part II is [...]

Bidoun once again hosted the video lounge, a space for video, talks and performances. The lounge was co-designed by Traffic, with typography by the Khatt Foundation, and kindly supported by the Emirates Foundation. Programs included FLOWERS (curated by Bidoun), ME AND HER AND OUR PUNCTUATION MARKS (curated by Christine Tohme), and THE MESSAGE (curated by Sylvia Kouvali).

Tank.tv screening series at the Tate Modern curated by Bidoun’s Negar Azimi. This exhibition attempts to reveal the weight of diverse histories that define the current moment – whether these be manifest in the form of national myth, ritual, architecture or pop culture. The programme includes work from Ziad Antar, Shahryrar Nashat, Rosalind Nashashibi, Yael Bartana, Iman Issa, Hassan Khan, The Atlas Group, Ahmet Ogut and Haris Epaminonda.

‘Dubai Now’, a program featuring recent work by UAE-based artists and filmmakers Ebtisam Abdulaziz, Lamya Gargash, Nawaf Al Janahi and Waleed Al Shehhi, is included as a projected installation in the exhibition ‘Dubai Next: the Face of 21st Century Culture’ at the Vitra Design Museum. Over the past decade a nascent filmmaking scene has developed in the UAE, spearheaded — in the absence of dedicated film schools and a local industry – by homegrown initiatives such as the Emirates Film Competition and Gulf Film Festival. Groups of young Emirati men and women have produced a substantial body of short films, many of which explore the nature of being ‘local’ in today’s rapidly changing society – a subject rarely debated in the public realm.

A party to celebrate the end of Home Works IV, the forum organized by Ashkal Alwan.

Writer, film critic and web theorist Gary Dauphin on the Cleaver Sleeve, a revolutionary trouser design (circa 1975) by the soon-to-be-ex-Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver. Bidoun Editor in Chief Lisa Farjam on the secret of her beating heart. Writer Anand Balakrishnan on castrated pop singers, American imperialism, Arab moustaches and the mystery of Naguib Mahfouz’s white linen suit…

At Art Dubai 2008, Bidoun curated and commissioned programs of artists film for a bespoke cinema and a video lounge. Film programs curated by Bidoun, Nav Haq and Tirdad Zolghadr feature work by 20 artists, making up the largest show of video art staged in the Gulf to date. Participating artists include Haluk Akakce, Ziad Antar, Yasmeen Al Awadi, Loulou Cherinet, Chris Evans, Shahab Fotouhi, Matthew Grover, Iman Issan, Nadine Khan, David Maljkovic, Shahyrar Nashat, Rosalind Nashashibi, Yoshua Okon, Hossam El Sawah, Anna Witt, Akram Zaatari.

At the CAF, Bidoun Projects presented a seminal film by Istanbul-based artist Emre Hüner, comprised of exquisitely drawn and animated landscapes that form fantastical future-retro worlds.

Shumon Basar, Antonia Carver and Markus Miessen, co-editors of Bidoun Book WITH/WITHOUT: Spatial Products, Practices and Politics in the Middle East, participated in a discussion with Stefano Boeri and Rem Koolhaas, followed by the launch of With/Without and sister publication Al Manakh.

At the DIFC Gulf Art Fair in 2007, Bidoun designed an outdoor lounge on Fort Island at Madinat Jumeirah, showing work by Susan Hefuna, Ala Ebtekar, and Amir H Fallah, and a specially commissioned series of cushions by Dubai-based artists Nadine Kanso, Loreta Bilinskaite, Haig Aivazian, Amna Al Zaabi and Raghda Bukhash.

A series of public programs co-organized by P.S.1 with innovative publications from New York and nationwide, including The Believer, Cabinet, Clear Cut Press, Esopus, Influence, The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, Mass Appeal, n+1, The Relay Project, and Topic, as well as Bidoun. Tracking Bidoun presented a talk by artist and geographer Trevor Paglen on the CIA’s use of civilian planes to ‘render’ and ‘disappear’ suspected terrorists. Paglen also took on his recent trip to Kabul on the trail of secret prisons, black sites in the US, as well as what unmarked airplanes can tell us, and what they cannot. Thomas Keenan, head of Bard College’s Human Rights Project, acted as respondent.

A film night curated by Bidoun member Tirdad Zolghadr, featuring works by Hito Steyerl (November), Dirk Herzog (Pelmeni/Blini), Fikret Atay (Lalo’s Story) and Giovanni Carmine and Christoph Buchel (PSYOP).

A series of week-long exhibitions curated by Bidoun in which artists were given carte blanche not only in terms of content, but are also free to behave as artists or curators in absentia.