The Parasitic Reading Room - a nomad, spontaneous and parasitic set of reading spaces took place along the venues  of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial ‘A School of Schools’ and other spots in the city.

With the intention of 'parasitically' entering those spaces, engaging event participants, visitors, ideas and content and provoking a contagion of knowledge.

A spontaneous school, made by reading aloud a selection of texts that are related with the biennale's scope.

Selected fragments of texts on education, radical thinking, literature, and many other sources of knowledge were collected to create two small booklets.

Readings took place across Biennial venues and throughout the city of Istanbul - as well as broadcasting live from radioee strolling radio show.

By reading aloud we share a space of intimacy, a time and place of learning not only from the contents, but from the nuances, the accents, the cadence of the reading.

Books and encounters as an open school.

What kind of readings should form an alternative bibliography on different pedagogical models, about other sources of knowledge, that come not only [but also] from the pages of our favourite books?

If everywhere is a learning environment, we vindicate the importance of books—be them fiction, poetry or critical theory—as learning environments;

those spaces where empathy and otherness are stronger than ideologies, where we can find space to ‘parasite’ each other’s knowledge and experience and create an open school by the simple but strong gesture of reading aloud together.

Because, what is a school if not a promise?

The Parasitic Reading Room is a collaboration between dpr-barcelona and the Open Raumlabor University. This fragments of texts are part of the Parasitic Reading Room's statement, that can be read here