Bahaal is an arts and culture magazine inspired by the juxtaposition of languages, sensibilities, and styles on McDaniel Budapest Campus.
باحال
“Bahaal” in Farsi is a slightly retro slang term for “hip” or “cool”. Each issue of the magazine will feature a selection of student contributions, emphasizing the range of media and forms of expression which can be found on our campus.
The history of Bahaal dates back to the Spring 2017 semester, when a group of McDaniel Budapest students decided to create an arts and culture magazine they called Kontraszt. The name was a reference to Contrast Literary Magazine, a parallel publication on the McDaniel Westminster campus which has been published continuously since 1957. On our campus, Kontraszt editors Camden Ostrander, Nika Boljanovic, and Chahinez Haddad wanted to create a platform for young artists to “gather art in all its forms: poems, stories, videos, music, and photos (if we could share smells, we would have done it).” The magazine ran for two semesters and then went dormant as students graduated and moved on to other projects.
In Spring 2021, Faraz Bahabadi and Arthur Solomon Zur Schmiede O’Culley decided to revive and reimagine Kontraszt as a new magazine, Bahaal Kollázs. They began to design a new site and collect student work, working with designer Helia Shahmohammadi. The first issue, Two Thousand and Twenty One, features the work of several graduating seniors (Angelica Stickle, Jinyuan Chen, Arthur S. Z. S. O’Culley), as well as Faraz’s striking photographs of Iran. The issue includes a long-format interview with Sarah Diefallah, whose senior exhibition at the FISE gallery was one of the most expansive seen at McDaniel Budapest.
This year, a new editorial team took up the reins of the magazine and decided to shorten the name to Bahaal. Current editors Canan Atik, Tina Almuhtashem, Shion Kai, Anna Tavanna and designer Dávid Chen worked together with McDaniel Budapest web team (Diana Ollah and Gábor Mudra) to produce the current site and second issue of the magazine. In 2023, Janan will continue as editor, and will be joined by Hyunjoong Kwon and co-founder Faraz Bahabadi.