I'm on my second issue of Bidoun. That's pretty good going for a magazine that costs $19.95 in Australia. The bottom of the second copy I have – Winter 2009 (pictured above) – is warped and crinkled because a can of premixed gin and tonic (classy stuff) that I was carrying in my backpack with the newly-purchased Bidoun was mysteriously pierced in transit, leaching to a height of about 8cm. It took a few days to dry out, and I had to carefully un-stick the pages each morning before replacing it back on the window sill.
BUT WHO CARES because the magazine is so great. An arts and culture journal that is published out of New York offices and contains content solely about or from the Middle East, Bidoun is classy and cool and interesting and funny and really well designed. Each issue is themed – the damaged copy in question is 'Kids' – and strikes a really nice balance of art and reading material. Aesthetically, it's the magazine-lovers wet dream, with different paper stocks, perforated pages, weird fold-outs and flaps. Its layout is busy but sharp (how I do dislike minimalist layout), with plenty of designy title pages and headers. Another good decision was to put the advertising (all for international art galleries) in the first 20 pages, leaving the rest of the mag freed up for the good stuff. My hats off to Babak Radboy and Jiminie Ha – very swish.
But what Bidoun does best is bring young stories and art with a Middle Eastern focus to an otherwise fairly ignorant Western peer group. It challenges one-dimensional preconceptions without so much as nodding to them, and divides the broad term 'Middle Eastern culture' into its many parts by bringing together voices from vastly different regions.
Invariably, the subjects of the 'Artist Projects', photographic essays, interviews and true stories are particularly fascinating and there is a good smattering of politics. It takes the piss with panache, and is polished off with three disgusting regional recipes on the last page. It also contains reviews, an international exhibition listing and a glossary of need-to-know Arabic phrases.
I would wager it takes its cues from The New Yorker (and poaches its writers) but aims for a younger, more poppy audience. It's everything Vice could never be.
www.bidoun.com
