INTERVIEW WITH LISA FARJAM
Editor in Chief of BIDOUN Magazine
Farhad Moshiri: What were your primary reasons for starting BIDOUN?
Lisa Farjam: BIDOUN was created to foster dialogue among people in the Middle East region and people in general. It was also created to bridge a gap for people like me -- people who are of Middle Eastern heritage, but have no real connection or access to the subculture of the place they may romanticize about, imagine, or simply visit once every few years—to the people of those communities. I felt the most important thing I could do was to contest the one-dimensional view of the Middle East and its people that tends to be spun by the mainstream media. The main goal was to introduce an alternative to the sensationalism. You have to first level the playing field before you have a fair game. But then I realized it would be just as important to build bridges within the Middle East itself, to create a space for an inter-regional dialogue. I guess I had this utopian vision of all of us getting along for the purpose of something greater than self-promotion. The possibility of a platform could be explosively powerful.
BIDOUN is being distributed in many major cities around the world, but there seems to be a distribution ban on your magazine in Iran unless you self-censor. Doesn’t that defeat your purpose? How does it make you feel and how are you going to overcome it?
We don't self-censor. There is no power in showing skin just for the sake of it. We print what is relevant, what is important, and what is interesting. To us. If we think that Ershad (Ministry of Culture & Islamic Guidance) or other authorities will be opposed to something, we find ways around it. We can print it small, or pixilated, for example. But there is not one thing that we have wanted to include in BIDOUN that we haven’t. We distribute in Iran through our friends, carry ten in at a time with people traveling to Tehran and sell them at half the price. The most important thing is to get it out there, have it pass through hands and circulate. And it is. If we cannot distribute through bookstores in Iran, we can still distribute through our subscription system. As long as we are not censoring our ideas and it is being read, talked about, even critiqued, I am happy.
You are now on your fifth issue. What sort of reactions and criticisms have you received from your readers within the Middle East and have they influenced your decision-making as to the form and content of your magazine?
We have been trying to negotiate a balance between two audiences-those that are new to contemporary Middle Eastern art production outside of the exploitative identity art and people that are perhaps more intimate with artistic expression on that side of the world. Many readers are not familiar with the problems contemporary artists in the Middle East have been facing – ethnic marketing and beyond. It is very difficult, but I think we are approaching the right balance. It may take another year or two, but at least we have a clear goal. We have changed the aesthetic, we are trying to expand our network of writers and contributors, and we keep trying to stress that this is an open forum.
From what you're saying it seems that you're gradually building a non-Middle Eastern readership as well. As a Middle Eastern artist, or in BIDOUN's case, do you think there is a formula to appeal to the western audience? In other words, has the West become predictable?
I can’t make sweeping generalizations. BIDOUN has definitely gained an appeal from a western audience that is fairly misinformed and not aware of Orientalism and its tendencies. The cover story of the New York Times Magazine this week featured an expose on media and news channels in the Middle East. The cover of the magazine looked like a Koran replete with gilded Arabic calligraphy. There was no English on the page. At least ten people told me how beautiful they thought it was. Is it really possible that this kind of thing is still so exotic? The magazine appeals to the western audience because it is exotic, beautiful. People still want to see the coffee shops, hijabs and the bazaars. We live in a globalized society, but it is not difficult to understand why some western readers are still so unwilling to accept the possibility of a contemporary Middle East. To them, it won’t be interesting if there is no Othering project or if exoticism is lacking. By bypassing traditional iconography and cheap one-dimensionality, maybe BIDOUN can at least offer an alternative, ask questions, possibly confuse rigid preconceptions.
Do you think that contemporary Middle Eastern artists have come up with just as powerful an alternative to Orientalism to cause a shift in world focus?
Of course they have! But it’s not exclusively up to the artist to decide. It is what is chosen to be shown, what is privileged. And obviously selections are often based on what is marketable and what is marketable unfortunately often remains cheap exotica. We acknowledge that marketing tendency, the appetite for the ethnic, and finally try to turn that paradigm on its head.
The reason why I want your opinion in this catalogue is because both of us consciously decided to show works of artists from or dealing with a specific ethnographic region. By doing so we are feeding the mentality that tends to categorize, label and distance, which we are fundamentally against. One way to avoid such trappings was to simply include several western artists, with non Middle Eastern ideas, to create a more international platform—but we didn't. How would you answer to the valid criticism of perpetuating cultural clustering?
Good question. First of all, its true that by creating a regionalized platform we can perhaps fall into the trap of reductionism. Being a regional platform is both a strength and a weakness. But the point of BIDOUN was to offer an alternative, period, and that is the idea that carries through this experiment. We bend the notion of region, introducing a comparative perspective and breaking narrow categorizations. That’s the essence of the “without” that is BIDOUN, the ambiguity. But I think this evolution comes naturally with time.
Generally, contemporary Middle Eastern art that receives exposure deals with topical socio-political identity issues. For example abstractions in art are not usually appreciated. Why is it that we are seen as a reference to a bigger picture and not as individuals?
I think this is as much a fault of the artists as it is the curators and press. I think that more often that not the press is just looking for an easy hook. With abstractions or deviations from the immediately political in art, there is a difficulty in selling it as a tidy package. It just is what it is. It is not a political statement. She is not making work because she is a refugee. Or maybe she is. But anyway, this kind of stuff sells because the sexy refugee slash performance artist sells. It’s what is seductive, plain and simple. I’m not sure what comes first anymore, the cart or the horse. It’s all so boring though, isn’t it? Another fact that I often forget unless I am in the states is that there really is limited knowledge or background related to the Middle East in general. The cheap stuff-the veil, Islam, oppression/repression-it’s all fairly new to this audience, even though it makes some of us want to vomit.
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