在中東最有影響力的一本藝文雜誌
Since its founding in 2004, the Middle Eastern art and culture magazine Bidoun has presented a distinctive, Technicolor vision of a complex region. It has given voice to important Arab feminists, analyzed Pakistani horror films, documented Egypt’s Tahrir Square uprising, and published interviews with the rapper M.I.A. and the gallerist Larry Gagosian. It even explored the influence of “Star Wars” on Saddam Hussein’s son Uday.
從2004年中東藝術文化雜誌《Bidoun》創刊時起，它向我們展現了一個獨特而色彩繽紛的複雜地區。它給重要的阿拉伯女權主義者提供發表意見的渠道，它分析巴基斯坦恐怖影片，記錄埃及的解放廣場(Tahrir Square)暴動，公佈對說唱歌手M.I.A.和畫廊老闆拉里·加戈西安(Larry Gagosian)的採訪。它甚至探討《星球大戰》(Star Wars)對薩達姆·侯賽因(Saddam Hussein)的兒子烏代(Uday)的影響。
This month, Bidoun put its entire archive of thousands of stories and artworks online with free access and asked cultural figures, including the Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, to create small collections of their favorites. The archive, at turns zany and poignant, is a photo album of a long and dramatic decade, from the aftermath of Sept. 11 to the reverberations of the Arab Spring.
2015年12月，《Bidoun》把自己的全部歷史資料——包括上萬個故事和藝術品——免費放到網上，並邀請文化名人創建自己的小收藏夾，包括土耳其諾貝爾獎得主奧漢·帕穆克(Orhan Pamuk)和策展人漢斯·烏爾裏克·奧布里斯特(Hans Ulrich Obrist)。這些資料有的滑稽，有的尖銳，就像這漫長而具有戲劇性的十年的縮影——從9·11事件的影響到阿拉伯之春(Arab Spring)的反響。
“Bidoun was born of a particular moment — the post 9/11 period — and was founded by a bunch of people who are Middle Eastern in a broad sense,” said Negar Azimi, a senior editor. She described her cohort as “people who grew up speaking multiple languages, maybe all of them badly,” or who came of age “listening to heavy metal in Tehran or Egyptian tape metal in Kuwait.”
該雜誌的高級編輯內加爾·阿齊米(Negar Azimi)說：“《Bidoun》誕生於一個特殊時期——9·11事件後的那個時期。它是由一羣廣義上的中東人創立的。”她說她的同事是“講多種語言長大的，可能哪一種講得都不好”，或者是“在德黑蘭聽着重金屬音樂或在科威特聽着埃及磁帶”長大的。
Ms. Azimi, who is Iranian-American and grew up in Europe and the United States, added: “Our vision of the Mideast extends to India, it extends to L.A. It certainly doesn’t fulfill the expectations of the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ vision that’s so pervasive.”
阿齊米是伊朗裔美國人，在歐洲和美國長大。她補充說：“我們對中東的界定延伸至印度，延伸至洛杉磯。這樣的理解肯定與中東是‘文明衝突地帶’的普遍看法大不相同。”
For a magazine whose circulation has never gone above 10,000, Bidoun has had an outsize influence, especially in the art world. “Bidoun’s arrival was a clear signal that a new digital cosmopolitanism had arrived with the early aughts,” said Stuart Comer, the chief curator of media and performance art at the Museum of Modern Art.
《Bidoun》的每期發行量從未超過1萬，但它的影響力極大，尤其在藝術界。現代藝術博物館(Museum of Modern Art)的媒體與行爲藝術策展主管斯圖爾特·科默(Stuart Comer)說：“《Bidoun》的出現是早期新數字化世界主義到來的清晰標誌。”
“Conceived in the spirit of an era in which citizenship is no longer a secure certainty,” he said, “it has become a hub for a sprawling network of artists, writers, curators and designers” who he said are also drawn to offerings like Home Works, at the Ashkal Alwan cultural center in Beirut; the Sharjah Biennial; the Cinémathèque de Tanger; and Art Dubai.
他說：“它是在公民責任感不再可靠的時代精神中誕生的。它成爲由藝術家、作家、策展人和設計師所組成的龐大網絡的樞紐。”他說，這些人也喜歡貝魯特Ashkal Alwan文化中心的Home Works活動、沙迦雙年展(Sharjah Biennial)、丹吉爾先鋒影展Cinémathèque de Tanger)和迪拜藝術節(Art Dubai)等活動。
Bidoun means “without” — as opposed to “within” — in Arabic and Farsi. “When I came up with the name, I was struggling,” said Lisa Farjam, the magazine’s founding editor and an Iranian-American who was then living in Europe. “I felt like I was without a place,” she said. “I belong to many places and none. That was when I found that word. It meant a lot to me.”
Bidoun在阿拉伯語和波斯語中的意思是without，與within相對。該雜誌的創始編輯莉薩·法拉姆(Lisa Farjam)是伊朗裔美國人，創刊時她住在歐洲。她說：“我是在痛苦掙扎中想出這個名字的。我感覺自己沒有歸屬感。我屬於很多地方，但又不屬於任何一個地方。我是在那種境況下找到這個詞的。對我來說，它具有重要意義。”
Ms. Farjam’s father, a businessman based in Dubai, backed the magazine until it became a nonprofit in 2010, based in New York. The magazine’s most recent print edition came out in 2013. Since then, its staff members, all but one of whom are now volunteers, have been working on curatorial projects and events with institutions including New York University, the Sfeir-Semler Gallery in Beirut and the Serpentine Gallery in London.
法拉姆的父親是迪拜的一位商人，他一直資助這本雜誌，直到2010年它成爲紐約的一本非營利雜誌。它的最近一期紙質版出版於2013年。從那以後，它的工作人員——現在只有一位不是志願者——與紐約大學(New York University)、貝魯特的斯費爾-塞姆勒畫廊(Sfeir-Semler Gallery)和倫敦的蛇形畫廊(Serpentine Gallery)等機構合作策劃項目和活動。
Over the years, Bidoun has been a testing ground for artists including the French-Moroccan Yto Barrada and Sophia Al-Maria, who is half Bedouin Arab, half Norwegian and whose work in Bidoun later became her 2012 memoir, “The Girl Who Fell to Earth.” Next year, she is to have a show at the Whitney Museum.
這些年，《Bidoun》成爲很多藝術家的試驗場，包括法裔摩洛哥藝術家伊託·巴拉達(Yto Barrada)和索菲婭·艾爾-瑪麗亞(Sophia Al-Maria)，後者有一半貝多因阿拉伯血統，一半挪威血統。2012年，她把自己在《Bidoun》上發表的作品編纂成回憶錄《落入塵世的女孩》(The Girl Who Fell to Earth)。明年，她將在惠特尼博物館(Whitney Museum)舉辦個展。
The magazine has also allowed readers to rediscover the writer and artist Etel Adnan, who was born in 1925 and whose life traces the complexities of the Arab situation in the 20th century. (Ms. Adnan was interviewed in Bidoun and also wrote on the little magazines from Beirut and Morocco that influenced her in the ’50s and ’60s, an era of transformation across the Arab world.)
這本雜誌還引領讀者重新發現作家兼藝術家埃泰萊·阿德南(Etel Adnan)。她生於1925年，她的一生反映出20世紀阿拉伯情況的複雜性（阿德南接受過《Bidoun》的採訪，還寫過關於貝魯特和摩洛哥小雜誌的文章，那些雜誌在阿拉伯世界變革的五六十年代對她產生了深刻影響）。
In Bidoun in 2008, the Chicago-based American artist Michael Rakowitz did a series of cartoon drawings called “Strike the Empire Back,” about Saddam Hussein’s son Uday and his obsession with “Star Wars.” The first Iraqi screening of “Star Wars” is believed to have been held at a private event at Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party headquarters in March 1980, six months before the start of the Iran-Iraq war, and the 15-year-old Uday attended.
2008年，芝加哥的美國藝術家邁克爾·拉科維茨(Michael Rakowitz)畫了一系列卡通畫，名叫《反擊帝國》(Strike the Empire Back)，講的是薩達姆·侯賽因的兒子烏代以及他對《星球大戰》的癡迷。據說，《星球大戰》在伊拉克的首映是1980年3月在薩達姆·侯賽因阿拉伯復興社會黨(Baath Party)總部的一次私人活動上。六個月後，兩伊戰爭爆發，15歲的烏代參戰。
In 1995, Uday formed the Fedayeen Saddam, a violent paramilitary organization, and presented his father with a prototype for its helmet, modeled on that of Darth Vader. In July 2003, United States forces found and killed Uday and his brother Qusay. In 2010, Mr. Rakowitz’s piece became part of an exhibition of his work at the Tate Modern.
1995年，烏代建立暴力準軍事組織薩達姆突擊隊(Fedayeen Saddam)，向父親呈獻突擊隊頭盔的樣品，它是模仿達思·韋德(Darth Vader)的頭盔製作的。2003年7月，美軍發現並殺死烏代和他的弟弟庫賽(Qusay)。2010年，拉科維茨的這一系列作品在泰特現代美術館(Tate Modern)他的個展上展出。
In 2011, Bidoun produced an issue on the Tahrir Square uprising that led to the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, before the return of military rule in 2014. Called “a rather brief moment in time,” the issue is fractured, impressionistic “like a French film,” said Michael C. Vazquez, a senior editor. The aim, he added, was to capture “whatever it means to betray a moment of revolutionary possibility.”
《Bidoun》2011年的其中一期是關於解放廣場暴動，這次暴動促使埃及總統胡斯尼·穆巴拉克(Hosni Mubarak)下臺，2014年，埃及恢復軍事統治。這本雜誌的高級編輯邁克爾·C·巴斯克斯(Michael C. Vazquez)說，那一期被稱爲“非常短暫而及時的一刻”，“像一部法國電影”，支離破碎，給人以印象派的感覺。他補充說，目的是展現“一個有革命可能性的時刻”。
To make the issue, Bidoun held meetings, often at Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery, and produced a kind of oral history. Interview subjects included teenage bloggers; newspaper editors; a tour guide at the Egyptian Museum of Cairo (the issue also featured lists of artworks stolen from it during the uprising); a journalist whose books on the Mubaraks had been banned and the Egyptian novelist Mahmoud Othman, whose self-published novel “Revolution 2053” in some ways anticipated the rebellion.
爲了出版那一期，《Bidoun》多次召開會議，大多是在開羅的市政廳畫廊(Townhouse Gallery)進行，留下了一段口述的歷史。採訪對象包括十幾歲的博主、報紙編輯、埃及開羅博物館(Egyptian Museum of Cairo)的導遊（那一期還提到暴亂期間被盜的藝術品）、一名記者（他寫的關於穆巴拉克的著作遭到封殺），以及埃及小說家馬哈茂德·奧斯曼(Mahmoud Othman)——他自助出版的小說《革命2053》(Revolution 2053)從很多方面預言了這次暴亂。
Bidoun has also sought to broaden the conventions of travel writing by giving space to writers who are often hard to categorize. It published the Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina reflecting on the viral success of his Granta essay “How to Write About Africa,” and personal essays by the Los Angeles-based writer Gary Dauphin, a former editor in chief of and ; the Indian writer Achal Prabhala; and the cultural critic Sukhdev Sandhu.
《Bidoun》還努力擴展旅行文學的傳統，給那些通常很難歸類的作家提供發表空間。它出版了以下作家的作品：肯尼亞作家比尼亞萬加·瓦伊納伊納(Binyavanga Wainaina)——他講述自己入選《格蘭特》(Granta)的散文《如何講述非洲》(How to Write About Africa)獲得的極大成功；洛杉磯作家、和網站的前主編加里·多芬(Gary Dauphin)，發表的是他的個人散文；印度作家阿沙萊·普拉哈拉(Achal Prabhala)；以及文化批評家蘇克德夫·桑杜(Sukhdev Sandhu)。
In 2009, Bidoun began a library project, a collection of about 3,000 books ranging from pulp fiction to more intellectual works, that “documents the innumerable ways that people have depicted and defined — that is, slandered, celebrated, obfuscated, hyperbolized, ventriloquized, photographed, surveyed, and/or exhumed — the vast, vexed, nefarious construct known as ‘the Middle East,’” the magazine’s website reads.
2009年，《Bidoun》開始進行一個圖書館項目，收藏了約3000本圖書，從通俗小說到更具智慧的作品。該雜誌的網站寫道，那些作品“記錄了人們描繪和界定‘中東’——這個廣闊、動盪、邪惡的概念——的無數方式，比如誹謗、慶祝、混淆、誇張、口述、拍攝、調查和/或發掘，”。
The library has been put on view in six cities, including at the New Museum in New York and the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh.
這個圖書館在六座城市展出，包括在紐約的新博物館(New Museum)和匹茲堡的卡內基國際展(Carnegie International)上。
Bidoun was sold at high-end bookshops from New York to Paris but often struggled with distribution in the Middle East. Putting the archives online is a way to reach more readers.
《Bidoun》在從紐約到巴黎的高端書店銷售，但是在中東地區的發行卻往往比較困難。把歷史資料放在網上是爲了接觸更多讀者。
“So many times someone said, ‘Oh I wish I could see that issue.’ And now it’s finally there,” Ms. Farjam, the founding editor, said. “Now it’s cemented in the ether forever.”
“我無數次聽到有人說：‘哦，真希望我能看到那一期。’現在終於能看到了，”創刊編輯法拉姆說。“現在它將永遠存在於網絡空間了。”
