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BIDOUN, Berlin (2026)

19/05/2026

Venice May 6, 2026 Etel Adnan book launch in ’s French pavilion thank you and all of our readers: Eungie Joo, Joana Hadjithomas, Pedro Barbosa, Hiba Abid, Mario Garcia Torres, Mercedes Vilardell, Michele Lamy, Ken Okiishi, Barbara Cassavechia, Quinn Latimer, Farah Al Qasimi, Maia Hawad, Meriem Bennani, Sophia Al Maria, Stuart Comer …

29/04/2026

Reading and launch in Venice next week ‘s French Pavilion — join us !!!

My Center is Not in the Solar System is a sweeping and tender collection of essays on the life and work of the late Lebanese poet and painter Etel Adnan, whose art bore witness to so many of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries’ epochal shifts. The book gathers reflections from friends, collaborators, and admirers, alongside a rare selection of Etel’s drawings.

With writings by Aria Aber, Omar Berrada, Gavin Bryars, Stuart Comer, Dominique Eddé, Fouad Elkoury, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Bruce Hainley, Isabella Hammad, Lamia Joreige, Abdellatif Laabi, Emily LaBarge, Quinn Latimer, Eileen Myles, Edwin Nasr, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ariana Reines, Lynne Tillman, Fawwaz Traboulsi, Anne Waldman, Robert Wilson, and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie.

Thank you

11/04/2026

Out now in our substack, Zain Khalid on the Post’s love-hate relationship with Mayor Mamdani (link in bio): The New York Post arrives in the morning like a brick through your window. It does not pretend to be above ideology. Its newsroom consists of eccentric conservatives, outer-borough uncles, Staten Island monarchists, Midtown libertarians, and the occasional tabloid surrealist who seems to have wandered in from the 80s. The Post is biased the way a cartoon is biased: the headline is the argument; the argument is the punchline; and the punchline is — occasionally, disconcertingly — perfect. Especially when its target is New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who celebrates his 100th day in office today…

08/04/2026

ARTISTS’ BLOCK: the rise and fall of Arab Berlin

A conversation between Marwa Arsanios, Tirdad Zolghadr, Jumana Manna, and Natascha Sadr-Haghighian

LINK IN BIO A LND BIDOUN.ORG TO READ

We started hearing about the cancellations within days. It was October 2023, and artists, writers, and culture workers were losing sales, residencies, fees, and even jobs for expressing solidarity with the cause of Palestinian liberation. In the ensuing months, it became clear that an especially large number of these cancellations were happening in Berlin, a city that has served as a haven for the counter-culturally inclined since the 1980s.

We reached out to four figures, artists and writers of varying ages and nationalities whose names will be familiar to longtime readers of Bidoun: Marwa Arsanios, Jumana Manna, Natascha Sadr-Haghighian, and Tirdad Zolghadr. Each of them lived in Berlin in the 2010s and experienced firsthand the sense of excited possibility around an Arab city in the heart of Europe — and the collapse of that illusion of inclusivity. Each brings to the conversation their own distinct relationship to Berlin and its histories of activism, collaboration, and dissent.

07/04/2026

We started hearing about the cancellations within days. It was October 2023, and artists, writers, and culture workers were losing sales, residencies, fees, and even jobs for expressing solidarity with the cause of Palestinian liberation. In the ensuing months, it became clear that an especially large number of these cancellations were happening in Berlin, a city that has served as a haven for the counter-culturally inclined since the 1980s.

We reached out to four figures, artists and writers of varying ages and nationalities whose names will be familiar to longtime readers of Bidoun: Marwa Arsanios, Jumana Manna, Natascha Sadr-Haghighian, and Tirdad Zolghadr. Each of them lived in Berlin in the 2010s and experienced firsthand the sense of excited possibility around an Arab city in the heart of Europe — and the collapse of that illusion of inclusivity. Each brings to the conversation their own distinct relationship to Berlin and its histories of activism, collaboration, and dissent.

Link in bio and bidoun.org for the conversation

24/03/2026

NEW at bidoun.org. A conversation with historian Naghmeh Sohrabi

To those on the outside, Iran can seem impenetrable even at the best of times. Few foreign journalists are allowed to work there, visas are hard to come by, and writing by Iranians doesn’t easily make its way into the mainstream media. This sense of remoteness has only grown since the onset of the military operation the US calls Epic Fury and Israel calls Lion’s Roar. Three weeks in, this criminal war of choice has killed thousands, unleashed billows of toxic smoke, and flattened millennia-old heritage sites, even as new fronts open in Lebanon and the Gulf states. That the Iranian government has restricted both internet and telephone has only compounded Iran’s seeming isolation.

Amid this information blackout, Naghmeh Sohrabi’s Substack, These Are the True Things, has been at once a balm and an indispensable resource. A historian at Brandeis University, Sohrabi has been sourcing and translating texts published inside wartime Iran — in local newspapers, online platforms, and Telegram channels — and offering thoughtful contextual introductions. Posts have treated philosophical and political debates, diaries of Iran under the bombs, accounts from oil workers, and even black humor. Some of Sohrabi’s posts feature her own autobiographical reflections — she was born in Iran and spent her teenage years there at the height of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. The “true things” she relates create a vivid portrait of what it is like to be alive right now, inside Iran and out: worrying about friends and family, struggling to make sense of developments, practicing politics, and even, despite everything, finding shoots of hope in the unfolding events.

27/02/2026

Ana ❤️ Niyū Yūrk:

A Conversation with Hiba Abid and Asad Dandia

By Yasmine Seale and Michael C. Vazquez

The story of Lady Liberty’s early life as an Egyptian is one I learned only recently, on a walking tour of Lower Manhattan. Focused on a couple blocks of the Financial District, the tour of what was once known as “Little Syria” offered a counter-history that placed a community usually banished to the margins at the heart of American life. Besides the crypto-Egyptian statue, we learned that the first peace treaty signed by the United States was written in Arabic; that both the Vanderbilts and the Roosevelts descend from an infamous Muslim pirate; and that among the habitués of the Dunkin’ Donuts at 19 Rector Street are those who believe that its grounds remain blessed on account of the makeshift mosque, established by an Ottoman consul, that once stood at that address.

For Ana ❤️ Niyū Yūrk, Bidoun Senior Editor Michael C. Vazquez sits down with curator Hiba Abid and ambulatory historian Asad Dandia to explore the cornucopia of MENA-Americana that is Niyū Yūrk: Middle Eastern and North African Lives in the City, an exhibition at New York Public Library, through March 8.

Conceived and introduced by Yasmine Seale.

Bodega Boys images courtesy of

31/01/2026

***

Editors’ Note

In the fall of 2022, as protests instigated by the killing of a young woman for the crime of improper hijab engulfed Iran, we asked one woman to keep a record of the events — the tempo and texture of the uprising, her own hopes and fears. That movement, dubbed “Woman, Life, Freedom,” captured the attention of the world. For a moment, it felt like the Islamic Republic of Iran might be on the precipice of historic change.

The euphoria was short-lived. Like earlier uprisings in 2019, 2009, and 1999, Woman, Life, Freedom was crushed by the government. Tens of thousands were arrested, and scores were executed for demanding a better life. Among many of our friends in Iran, a sort of low-level depression set in.

In the final days of 2025, protests erupted all over again, impelled by miserable economic conditions that have made even the most basic pursuits next to impossible. When the government cracked down some ten days later, it conducted its killing in the dark, shutting down cell towers and the internet, plunging this country of over 90 million into silence.

We asked the same diarist, a resident of Tehran, to walk us through her experience of these past weeks. We publish her words with the knowledge that this moment is ongoing, the story far from over. This text has been translated from Farsi.

In solidarity, Bidoun

LINK IN BIO

31/01/2026

Editors’ Note

In the fall of 2022, as protests instigated by the killing of a young woman for the crime of improper hijab engulfed Iran, we asked one woman to keep a record of the events — the tempo and texture of the uprising, her own hopes and fears. That movement, dubbed “Woman, Life, Freedom,” captured the attention of the world. For a moment, it felt like the Islamic Republic of Iran might be on the precipice of historic change.

The euphoria was short-lived. Like earlier uprisings in 2019, 2009, and 1999, Woman, Life, Freedom was crushed by the government. Tens of thousands were arrested, and scores were executed for demanding a better life. Among many of our friends in Iran, a sort of low-level depression set in.

In the final days of 2025, protests erupted all over again, impelled by miserable economic conditions that have made even the most basic pursuits next to impossible. When the government cracked down some ten days later, it conducted its killing in the dark, shutting down cell towers and the internet, plunging this country of over 90 million into silence.

We asked the same diarist, a resident of Tehran, to walk us through her experience of these past weeks. We publish her words with the knowledge that this moment is ongoing, the story far from over. This text has been translated from Farsi.

In solidarity, Bidoun

LINK IN BIO

31/01/2026

Editors’ Note

In the fall of 2022, as protests instigated by the killing of a young woman for the crime of improper hijab engulfed Iran, we asked one woman to keep a record of the events — the tempo and texture of the uprising, her own hopes and fears. That movement, dubbed “Woman, Life, Freedom,” captured the attention of the world. For a moment, it felt like the Islamic Republic of Iran might be on the precipice of historic change.

The euphoria was short-lived. Like earlier uprisings in 2019, 2009, and 1999, Woman, Life, Freedom was crushed by the government. Tens of thousands were arrested, and scores were executed for demanding a better life. Among many of our friends in Iran, a sort of low-level depression set in.

In the final days of 2025, protests erupted all over again, impelled by miserable economic conditions that have made even the most basic pursuits next to impossible. When the government cracked down some ten days later, it conducted its killing in the dark, shutting down cell towers and the internet, plunging this country of over 90 million into silence.

We asked the same diarist, a resident of Tehran, to walk us through her experience of these past weeks. We publish her words with the knowledge that this moment is ongoing, the story far from over. This text has been translated from Farsi.

In solidarity, Bidoun

Link in bio

31/12/2025

THE YEAR IN BIDOUNICA … subscribe to our (free) substack (link in bio) and peruse favorites by .rashidi .wiet and Sohrab Mohebbi

BIDOUN

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