Villa Arson is pleased to announce the publication of Unlearning Through Translation: A Critical and Collective Practice by Virginie Bobin, a new title in the collection La surface démange, edited by Alice Dusapin (Head of Publications) and Sophie Orlando (Scientific Director).
The book
Based on practical experiments, Unlearning with Translation: a Critical and Collective Practice, posits the act of translation as a pedagogical tool, a political act, and ultimately a gesture of care
in these tense cultural times. Written by French curator, writer, editor, and self-taught translatress Virginie Bobin, the essay revisits a series of workshops, exhibitions, and other collective activities
that took translation as both subject and method to unsettle entrenched conceptions of language, identity, and belonging. In particular, the ambiguous notion of “untranslatability” is used as a lens through which to examine the power relations at play in those institutional, economic, and political contexts inhabited by art workers. Alongside collaborations with artists including Mercedes Azpilicueta, Serena Lee, and Mounira Al Solh, Bobin’s reflections are grounded in her experience co-founding and facilitating the editorial and curatorial platform Qalqalah , which relies on translation as a tool for the production and publication of situated knowledge in three languages –French, Arabic, and English. Informed by feminist genealogies and methodologies throughout, the book maintains that collective labor and relations are key aspects of any critical practice, as exemplified in the concluding correspondence with Andrea Ancira.
Virginie Bobin
Virginie Bobin operates across research, curatorial and editorial practices, writing, pedagogy, and translation. Between 2009 and 2018, she worked for various art centers and residency programs (Villa Vassilieff, Bétonsalon, Witte de With, Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Performa). She is a Doctor in Artistic Research (PhD-in-Practice, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, 2023), a professor in Art and Social Practices at ésadhar (Rouen, since 2024) and a co-founding member of the editorial and curatorial platform Qalqalah . She edited several collective publications, including Bestiario de
Lengüitas (with Mercedes Azpilicueta, k.verlag, 2024).
About the collection scratching the surface
The Scratching the Surface collection offers self-reflexive accounts by pedagogues working with and in art schools, university departments of creative writing and of visual arts, and the educational spaces of art centers and museums—institutions often presumed to be progressive. The series interrogates the transformative possibilities and constraints of emancipatory pedagogies in the fields of visual art, performance, literature, art history, research, and art criticism. Taken from a poem by Audre Lorde, the title underlines the determination to undo and question certainties, bias, norms, and the fabric of pedagogical models. The series is particularly interested in artistic pedagogies in contexts of coloniality. Co-published with the Villa Arson in Nice, Scratching the Surface was initiated by Sophie Orlando and Céline Chazalviel and is today directed by Alice Dusapin and Sophie Orlando.
Practical information
Graphic design: In the shade of a tree
Publication date: October 2025
French edition
10.5 x 15.5 cm (paperback) / 164 pages / €12
Available from the Villa Arson publishing house shop and the Presses du réel website.
