Eat the Content: Celebrating Bidoun Magazine

The Beginning

Lisa Farjam Bidoun was really born out of a reaction to 9/11 and the subsequent rise of Islamophobia and sensationalist Western media coverage of the Middle East.

In the arts specifically, media coverage of the region was always quite superficial. I was interested in building bridges between cities like Cairo and Beirut, and working with the communities of writers and artists who lived there. Initially, Bidoun grew out of conversations between myself and my closest friend, Sunny Rahbar.

Sunny Rahbar Lisa and I lived together in a loft on Broome Street in New York after college. Then 9/11 happened. I came back to Dubai shortly after the attacks because my mum was freaking out, telling me I had to leave the US. One day, I was reading this article in the Gulf News about Kuwaiti bidouns – stateless people who had immigrated to Kuwait generations earlier but didn’t have papers.

I was like, ‘That’s a really good word!’

You have to remember that, back then, people would refer to us as ‘third culture kids’. I didn’t like that. We grew up in Dubai, but Lisa and I were both born in the States. For me, the word ‘bidoun’ – which means ‘without’ in Arabic and Farsi – really described our community: artists and writers from the Arab world living in Paris or New York or Los Angeles.

Lisa Farjam A magazine always made the most sense to me, probably because of nostalgia for my teenage years. In the beginning, it was really a bedroom zine project – a generously funded bedroom zine.

Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili Bidoun started after three of us graduated from Bard College – myself, Lisa and her now-husband, Brian Ackley – with funding from Lisa’s father, an art collector.

The only publishing experience we had going into it was that we were complete magazine whores. We grew up immersed in 1990s consumer culture, reading The Face [1980–2004] and i-D [1980–ongoing]. We were also inspired by Re-Magazine [1997–2007], a project devoted to deconstructing magazines, and Nest [1997–2004], this incredible magazine on architecture and design. Each issue was completely wild.

Antonia Carver I moved to Dubai from London in 2001. I was working as an arts writer and journalist for The Art Newspaper and Time Out Dubai. Then Sunny looked me up. She just came into the Time Out offices and said, ‘Hey, we have this crazy idea to create a magazine and set up these art nights – to start a collective. Do you want to be part of it?

I was interested in building bridges between cities like Cairo and Beirut, and working with the communities of writers and artists who lived there. Lisa Farjam

Sunny Rahbar It was a bit naive, when you think about it in retrospect, but we were psyched. Lisa was going to Paris for a year, and I also had to go to the American University of Paris, because I was three credits short for my degree. They had this entrepreneurship course, which helped you write a business plan. I took the course and started writing the business plan for Bidoun. That was in 2002 and, soon after, we started working on the zero issue, ‘We Are You’ [2004].

Building Up

Antonia Carver I joined halfway through the zero issue and we rolled from there. As Bidoun grew, we started to gather more people: Hassan Khan, Alia Rayyan, Tirdad Zolghadr. Negar Azimi also came on board. We did quite a few issues with that group. It was a blast and I learned so much from working with writers and artists like Sophia Al-Maria, Shumon Basar, Sukhdev Sandhu, and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie. Alia Al Sabi worked with me in Dubai, mostly out of the Shelter warehouse in Al Quoz.

Hassan Khan I first met Negar at a party in Cairo over 20 years ago. We ended up having a long, mildly playful, inspired conversation on a balcony. Soon enough Bidoun started coming into focus and I found myself, almost without noticing, getting more and more involved: first as a writer, then as editor-at-large and finally a full-time editor.

Negar Azimi I was living in Cairo, working at the Townhouse Gallery, when I met Lisa for the first time. She had just produced the zero issue, which was oriented from right to left – as an Arabic and Farsi language publication would be – but with English text. I didn’t know what to make of it but I was definitely taken by the idea that a publication might begin to capture the experience of our tribe, which is to say people with zig-zag backgrounds. I moved to Iran for a year not long after that, and Lisa and I continued to stay in touch and at some point she proposed that we work together. I think one of my conditions for coming on was being able to involve my friend Tirdad.

Antonia Carver I remember the way Lisa introduced us to Negar. She asked her what she didn’t like about the magazine, to really go through it with a fine-tooth comb, and tell her how we could improve. So, Negar wrote this email and Lisa forwarded it to all of us and said, ‘You don’t know Negar yet, but she’s brilliant, and this is what she thinks of you all.’ And we were like, ‘Wow, really ...’ But, magically, the minute Negar started, everyone came together. There was this embrace of the idea that we could be honest with each other and didn’t all have to think the same way and that was fundamental to the mission.

Negar Azimi There was a distinct shift when Tirdad came on board, more self-reflexivity vis-à-vis what it means to produce a magazine that is geographically defined as ‘Arts and Culture from the Middle East’. Tirdad had recently put together an exhibition at Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva called ‘Ethnic Marketing’ [2004] in which he engaged these questions. A lot of his ideas began to imbue the project – the perks and pitfalls of the geographic rubric.

Tirdad Zolghadr I was approached by Negar and Lisa around 2004, when I was working on ‘Ethnic Marketing’. It was meant as a critique of Okwui Enwezor’s Documenta 11 [2002], and all the excitement around the introduction of postcolonialism. It was a bit snarky. I mention this because it haunted my collaboration with Bidoun.

I was very seduced by the whole idea of Bidoun. At the same time, I thought I had to live up to this very critical, shrewd scepticism towards setting something up that would find its market in the West, even if it was speaking about the East.

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie I worked at a newspaper full time and attended graduate school part-time in Beirut; for a few months I took a break and worked at a bar. I was doing that when Lisa came to Beirut to talk to people about the magazine. So, my first meeting with her had to be at the bar. I think she had contacted me because I was writing for the arts and culture pages of the newspaper. She came in with the zero issue and I thought, ‘This is someone who’s actually doing it!’ She was wearing fishnet stockings and white pumps. She was a real personality. And I was just like, ‘I’ll do anything you want’. I started writing for the magazine the following issue: ‘We Are Spatial’ [2004].

The Reception

Lisa Farjam I was genuinely surprised by the growth of Bidoun, which really did feel like the result of word-of-mouth recommendation. Negar and I found a way to distribute the magazine in Tehran via the Museum of Contemporary Art. The curator there would have it under the front desk, and people would come in and take it. That one issue of Bidoun would reach ten people in Tehran. It would just be passed along.

Antonia Carver I remember launching the zero issue at Five Green, which was an itinerant arts collective in Dubai. People were just a bit gobsmacked, trying to fathom what it was and that we appeared to be noting, even celebrating, ‘bidounity’. In a good way.

Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili Our first subscriber was Homeland Security.

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie I remember a colleague of mine at a newspaper in Beirut looking at the first masthead and saying, ‘Who are all these people and what right do any of them have to say anything, much less about the Middle East?’

Negar Azimi For a lot of people, the experience of Bidoun was, and continues to be, bewildering. They’re like, ‘What is this?’ It’s quirky and irreverent. Definitely weird. In a regional context in which criticism tends to be neutered and vanity projects abound, it’s really not for everyone.

The Second Wave

Lisa Farjam Bidoun made a leap in quality in 2006. Until then, we were still approaching it as a zine. In the first couple of years, we really were trying to do everything – cooking, music, astrology. In 2006, we had a few additions to the team, including Babak Radboy and Mike Vazquez, who really made Bidoun what it is today.

Mike came from Transition Magazine [1961–ongoing] and had access to this whole other world of writers that we had not been able to work with. He’s a fantastic editor, so I thought the writing quality really improved once he joined us. And the art direction really jumped up a few notches when Babak joined us. He was an integral part of the magazine – arguably the most integral – because the way he looked at things and approached art was different from anyone we’d ever met. Maybe because he never went to art school.

Mike Vazquez I got there shortly after Tirdad resigned. This was in 2006. Basically, the original Bard group was breaking up and Bidoun was professionalizing in a way. Negar came and met with me in Cambridge. I was still working at Transition. [We ended up hanging out for a long time, partly because it rained.] I brought over some of the writers I’d worked with before, including [the late] Binyavanga Wainaina, who I plied with chili-infused vodka until he agreed to write a sequel to his famous satirical [Granta] essay, which Bidoun published as 'How to Write About Africa II: The Revenge', and Achal Prabhala. But many of our mainstays were new discoveries/original voices — Sophia Al-Maria, Anand Balakrishnan, Alexander Keefe, among others — who did just incredible, moving, mind-blowing work.

There was this embrace of the idea that we didn’t all have to think the same way and that was fundamental to the mission. Antonia Carver

Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili I think it was in Tompkins Square Park in New York where I met Babak. I think I was wearing a Bidoun tote bag, or maybe he was wearing a Bidoun tote bag. I asked him to illustrate an issue of the magazine. It was just meant to be. Once Babak came on, Bidoun had a really defined visual identity, and I think he did incredible things with the magazine.

Babak Radboy I was really young, maybe 23. I knew of the magazine, and I think I ran into Ketuta, who was then creative director, in Tompkins Square Park. I guessed that she was Georgian. She commissioned me to do some illustrations for one of the issues, and then they asked me to come on as creative director because Ketuta was transitioning out.

The Final Wave

Tiffany Malakooti I was studying graphic design at CalArts and Babak just emailed me. He had come across my website. They were looking for a new designer for the magazine. This was 2008. And I just moved to New York to work at Bidoun. I was excited. I was a fan. Then I got there and, awkwardly, it didn’t turn out to be that exactly a design job. It was a bit of everything. I quickly learned that Bidoun was a little messy.

Yasmine El Rashidi I used to work at Townhouse Gallery. William Wells, the gallery’s founding director, told me I had to meet Negar on her next visit to Cairo. He claimed that she used to run around the gallery in the dead of summer in a ski jacket, always with an ice cream cone in her hand. I was intrigued.

We did finally meet in early 2009 and immediately clicked, so she invited me into the fold. I was born and raised in Cairo, where I still live, and so I became the de facto Cairo station for Bidoun. When the team flew into Egypt for issue ‘25’ in March 2011, just after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, the meeting point was my house. We were camped out between my place and Townhouse Gallery for weeks.

Anna Della Subin In 2010, I had just graduated from Harvard Divinity School and I was desperate to deprogramme myself from academia. I started as an intern and worked my way up to senior editor. I published my first essays in Bidoun, including the piece that turned into my book Accidental Gods. It was this incredibly open space for me to find my own voice as a writer.

Sophia Al Maria I owe my entire writing career to Bidoun. Well, really, Mike is the one who brought me in. I had seen Bidoun in Townhouse Gallery in Cairo and I was stunned.

I really wanted to do something for the magazine, but I was very young, still in university at Goldsmiths. When I went to New York for the first time, I got in touch, hoping to do something, maybe intern, but that didn’t work out.

A couple of years later, Mike invited me to write something. I think I’d submitted a couple of things that were autobiographical, and Mike just took me under his wing and really taught me a lot about storytelling through that format of an essay.

Andy Pressman ‘Bazaar’ [2010] was the first issue I worked on. Lucy Raven, who was managing editor, was the one who brought me in. Negar would sweep in every once in a while, like a ghost haunting a castle. That’s just the mental image I have.

Once Babak came on, Bidoun had a really defined visual identity, and I think he did incredible things with the magazine. Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili

Mike Vazquez I think that Bidoun lost something when Lisa stopped being involved. She had really good instincts. A lot of us have our biases and she was able to not wholly share anyone’s bias and direct things in a certain way.

Andy Pressman I designed the last print issue, ‘Interviews’, in 2013. We had moved into working on the website, which I think gave everyone an excuse to stop the print run. There were a lot of reasons why the print edition stopped – mainly financial ones – but we convinced ourselves that the website would let us do this and that, and then we would come back to print. There was a lot of talk for a while about the next print thing.

The Culture

Lisa Farjam I wanted to reach as many people as possible. I didn’t want it to be this obtuse art magazine. I wanted everything to be accessible.

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie It was like a dysfunctional family, a completely dysfunctional family.

Tiffany Malakooti I definitely tried to leave Bidoun multiple times, even still to this day. But it’s somehow stayed part of my life.

Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili There were a lot of angry emails flying around. Everyone was sensitive about what visuals we used to talk about orientalism, and, at the time, email really was a new form of communication. So, we had a lot of fights.

Tirdad Zolghadr All the editorial conversations and negotiations, from my perspective, were: Are we pandering to Western appetites? Are we otherising ourselves? Is this orientalism or neo-orientalism? I was that guy. I think I was critical to the point of being paranoid.

Antonia Carver People moved in and out of their roles a lot. If we look at our masthead, it’s probably different every single issue. Like, one day I would be editor; the next, I would be director of projects, then something else.

Negar Azimi We had a strict policy, which was effectively a political gesture, that we’d produce our own imagery rather than tapping into an existing well of stale images about the Middle East. Babak, who was almost Marxist in his thinking about the material conditions of production, was central to that. He’d stage extraordinary, even visionary, art-directed photo shoots. Perhaps most canonically, we put a taxidermied goat in UGG boots on the cover of our last issue: ‘Interviews’ [2013]. But there was so much more.

Mike Vazquez For the cover of the ‘Kids’ issue [2009], which featured a photo of a young boy smoking with his arm in a cast, Babak said, ‘It’s only US$10,000 to put glitter on the cigarette and the cast.’ And Lisa was like, ‘That’s amazing!’ I’ll talk to my dad.’ When the money dried up, we began to create conceptual ‘interstitial’ imagery instead.

Babak Radboy I had a really long leash – no leash, really – when it came to the visual identity of the magazine. For instance, for the ‘Sports’ issue [2011], I asked a bunch of political refugees on the Iranian left how much they would sell their various body parts for, and we laid their answers out as the interstitial spreads in the issue. When you read that reading the stories, it creates an affective political grounding for the issue.

Andy Pressman I’ve worked on other publications and Bidoun was the most inefficient. I’d be typesetting articles the night before we were going to press, because we’d only just got the text. Its inefficiency, however, is what offered its brilliance. The spirit of it was so idiosyncratic that each issue would just be entirely of itself.

Favourite Hits

Negar Azimi Assembling an issue in Egypt after the revolution was thrilling. The ‘25’ issue [2011] – was named after 25 January, the day the uprising started in Cairo. Over the course of many weeks that spring we carried out marathon interviews with all sorts of people, from a progressive leader of the Muslim Brotherhood to a heroic group of teens who’d started a newspaper in Tahrir Square, to car mechanics or a sci-fi writer. The issue, which was literally crammed with content, offered a snapshot of a delirious moment in time that’s long gone. We know how the story ended. Egypt is more unfree than ever.

Babak Radboy Issue ‘25’ was really amazing. It was also the most difficult issue, for sure. One of the things we did was to buy every single piece of print we could find that had been produced since the revolution. It’s an archive we still have. The ‘Library’ issue [2010] is another one that was really cool. That was a totally bizarre undertaking.

Yasmine El Rashidi I love the ‘Library’ issue, both for its content and, especially, for the original photos that are attached, one per issue, to its cover. We sourced them from a Cairene friend, Amgad Naguib, who is a collector of anything and everything old – photographs, maps, memorabilia, furniture, sunglasses, wooden whistles, children’s toys. The photos on the covers came from one of his many stores: a big stack of 1980s Kodak prints. Those issues are collector’s items in the truest sense. 

Anna Della Subin You want to understand what Bidoun is, read Anand Balakrishnan’s ‘The Toughest Man in Cairo’ [2008]. In my life I’ve encountered several people who have lines of it memorized.

A Return to Print?

Lisa Farjam It’s a conversation I’ve been having every time I leave the house now: Why don’t we start Bidoun again? I don’t necessarily know if it has to be a printed object or if it has to assume the same structure as before. I would love to see more of what Bidoun is doing in terms of the Gaza Reader that was launched in Venice – a collection of writings from there.

Mike Vazquez I miss working together. We collaborate on other projects now, but it’s not the same as putting together a magazine. I definitely feel like I did some of the best work I’ve ever done with those people, and I’d love to do that again.

Anna Della Subin We’ve poured more of our editorial energy into exhibitions and books. We’re editing a very special book in memory of Etel Adnan right now. And we recently made one about Meriem Bennani [Life on the Caps, 2023], and published this monumental Reza Abdoh monograph in 2021.

I think we would all really love to return to a print edition of the magazine. It’s a question of everybody’s time and resources. There’s a number of different editorial projects that we’re thinking about right now. There’s talk of possibly doing a Bidoun cookbook, which I love.

Hassan Khan The question of return is also, of course, a question about the meaning of the project. Bidoun in the 2000s managed to create a counter-narrative, it helped make a large complex scene more visible even if it achieved that through a paradox; reductions and generalizations that ultimately constructed an image of the region that relied on a safe, charming otherness to sell itself. Today, in our intensely volatile transforming world, in the midst of an ongoing genocide, where the doxa cracks and multitudes everywhere start to claim power – are these strategies valid anymore?

I wanted to reach as many people as possible. I didn’t want it to be this obtuse art magazine. I wanted everything to be accessible. Lisa Farjam

Tirdad Zolghadr I don’t feel very strongly one way or another. What I would say is that there’s definitely a place for Bidoun today, but it would need to revisit a lot of its own foundations in order to stay relevant.

Tiffany Malakooti My reflex is no. The circumstances have really changed, and so we would have to think long and hard about what even it would mean for Bidoun to exist now. What is it? Who is it talking to? I don’t even know right now.

Babak Radboy The magazine era is over. Even online, you can’t have a magazine anymore. You have the cover, and then you have Instagram posts with pull quotes over images, and that’s a magazine. Nobody is going to click on anything ever again.

I want to start a magazine where it’s just like a bag of chips. It could be right at the checkout at the grocery store. There’s a cover, an article on the back and that’s it. And you can eat the contents.

This article first appeared in frieze issue 245 with the headline ‘Eat the Content’

Bidoun’s archive can be accessed via their website

_{Main image: Interviews, 2013, Bidoun issue #28; Failure, 2007, Bidoun issue #11; Soft Power, 2011, Bidoun issue #26; Bazaar, 2010, Bidoun issue #20. Courtesy: Bidoun magazine}