Bifid Readings is an experimental publishing project exploring reading as a polyphonic and transformative action. It is organized by Sara Santana López in collaboration with Mariana Jurado Rico, Margaux Koch Goei and María París; comprehending the workshops of collective translation Choir of Tongues and the public program Bifid Readings. During March 2022, designer Mirelle Van Tulder, publishing house Hambre Libros and curator Rosa Paardenkooper have been invited to talk about reading and making, sharing and transforming the book from the readers’ position.

Be Welcome to come to the Bifid Readings public installation from 14th to the 24th of April in NEVERNEVERLAND, featuring readings from the project and a participative zine making!

In this session, Mariana, Sara and Margaux met through video call with Rosa Paardenkooper. (1993, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, they/them)Rosa works as an independent curator, translator and editor. In their practice they explore public feelings through collaborative translation, digital accessibility, mental health awareness, and critical pedagogy. Together with Lucie Gottlieb they initiated the Mourning School, an artistic study program on the notion of being in grief as the stuff of our everyday. Rosa also initiated the self-organized school “School in Common” with Alen Ksoll and previously worked as curator of language & dissemination at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons.

Rosa was in their house in Sweden, where they recently moved, while they told us about the project they are doing at the moment, Mourning school. From the beginning of last year, they have been organising a program of events and activities with Lucie Gottlieb, all focused in the feelings of grief beyond the Western notion. Calling themselves a school is a conscious decision, trying to challenge the meaning of such a loaded word. We shared our impressions in accessibility and getting lost in the cultural elitist language, and reading in our mother tongues and having a two-year-old as a language teacher. They find in curating a way of sharing, marked by their own reading of the artwork and the way they choose to translate it to others.

Hosts: Mariana Jurado Rico and Sara Santana López
Sound operating: Margaux Koch Goei
Soundscape: Nicolás Vizcaíno Sánchez

This project is possible thanks to the support of the online radio platform Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, the intra-curricular initiative Unsettling, the space NEVERNEVERLAND and the Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst.