Bidoun Issue 4 Spring/Summer 2005

As crowds gathered in Martyrs’ Square in Beirut for the funeral of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, all the old flags came out. One could catch sight of the tired Progressive Socialist Party logo (white graphics on a faded blue background), Pierre Gemayel’s mug flogging for the Kitaeb (his haggard face jutting out from […]

Sunday Best (detail), slides, 2003-5, courtesy of the artist “Darling, I’ve bought you some crack,” purrs Loreta, striding in my front door. “From Satwa.” The crack in question is actually Krack, an antiseptic cream for sore heels, purchased from an area of Dubai known for its bargain basement outlets full of Burberry and Tods, besides […]

Fantasy embraces all forms of dreaming. In architecture, it implies a composed, projected environment that is surprising to the eye—a deliberate exercise that tests reality and triggers possibilities for the future. In a sense, all architecture is fantasy. Architectural design is always speculative, since it attempts to specify the future. Recent progressive architectural projects have […]

At the turn of the century, Dubai counted 1600 inhabitants. Today it has almost one million. The growth in population is rivaled only by its growth in garbage: Dubai’s domestic refuse increases annually by ten percent with an expected 2 million metric tons in 2008. As Dubai has developed, its strategy has been to “x” […]

Even when you don’t see me smile, in fact I am smiling. —Saddam Hussein When journalist Paul William Roberts interviewed Saddam Hussein in his Baghdad office back in the mid 90s, he went out of his way to comment on the furniture. Saddam, he explains, was “sitting behind the kind of gilt-shanked baroque desk that […]

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

VITAL STATS

NEWS

Mo’hammeds Mo’problems
Negar Azimi
Branding a Revolution
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie

Beasts of Burden
Negar Azimi

PREVIEWS

MUSEUM
War Bazaar
Yahia Lababidi

OPINION
Ebony Tower: Strategy of the New Self-Othering
Nav Haq

PROFILE
Loreta Bilinskaite-Burke: I’ll Be Your Mirror
Antonia Carver

But Home: Tarek Al Ghoussein
Jack Persekian

ARCHITECTURE
Metropolitan Dubai and the Rise of Architectural Fantasy
George Katodrytis

Dubai Fantasy Projects:
L.E.FT

WORKac

Foreign Office Architects

George Katodrytis and Khalid Najjar

Group8

Permanent Vacation: The Making of Someplace out of No-place
Brian Ackley

An Image of Dubai
Kevin Mitchell

Dubai Inc.: The Dubai Brand as Cultural Identity
Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFares

ARTIST COMMISSION
Photography by Armin Linke

Hey Doc, How about a Million Carrots?
Setareh Shahbazi

Stranger than Paradise
Lara Baladi

GULF AESTHETIC
Tropical Baroque: A Rough and Partial History of Popular Furniture
Tirdad Zolghadr

Establishment Unwound: UAE Arts
Antonia Carver

MUSIC
Slogans and Walls that Prevent Misunderstanding 2/5 BZ, aka Serhat Koksal
Tirdad Zolghadr

I’m Young and I need the Money: Eko Fresh, Konig von Deutschland
Joel Bisang

My Travels with Thomsum (or other ways I kept it real in old Dubai)
Nima Nabavi

FILM
UAE Top Ten
Antonia Carver

Paradise Now: Interview with Hany Abou-Assad

Spring Film Festival Diary

INTERVIEW BOOKS

Changing States
Charlotte Bydler

Cairo: City of Sand
Maria Golia

REVIEWS

PRODUCTS

COOKING
with Jehane Noujaim

AFTERTHOUGHT
Human Rights as Fetish
By Negar Azimi