With her practice, Bernke Klein Zandvoort moves between the fields of literature and visual arts. She has published poetry books and literary essays, makes video work, lecture-performances and live video essays. In addition, she works as a freelance editor, teacher and advisor.
A lyric essay in which I braid all kinds of research into sight and blindness with the life stories of several women whose stories revolve around (in)visibility. A poetic narrative about looking and being looked at. About birthing images with our eyes.
A poetic reflection on how a reader’s eye movements relate to the essay as a literary form. What it's also about: early eye trackers, (selective) blindness while looking, and pages that let light through.
As a guest editor, I compiled an issue on Mexican literature, seen through the lenses of 26 female authors. Ecofeminism and the position of womxn are recurring themes.
The myth of a Mexican moon goddess has been retold in many ways. I weave together different interpretations with the colonial idea of division, as it was implanted between bodies, in minds, and in landscapes. The storylines are porous and are partly told through the poetry of four Mexican poets.
Exploring the idea of an acoustic gaze with a group of musicians who are blind. From interviews with these musicians, I selected a collection of sentences, that I gave back to them as material for a new song.
An artificial eye, phantom images, the predictive brain and blindness without darkness: to what extent is seeing a virtual process?
In these poems I collect data and questions that keep me company: what is the role our senses and our language play in the construction of realities?
An artist who cannot see reproduces her mirror image by touch.
Expanding the notebook. Digging deeper. The endless number of windows open on my screens overlap with those opened in my mind.
'The harvest of Vitro Plus doesn’t germinate from spores, seeds or cuttings, but from a jelly of genes that are cultivated on clean tables, in clean Petri dishes, and with sterilised knives and tweezers in a laboratory.'
Using different storylines, I explore the materiality of the comma.
My mother started with a shorter fishing rod, because she wasn’t yet strong enough to reel in a fish along a full-size rod. She must have been around seven or eight years old. During her teenage years, she got strong enough and would bring the same ensemble as her father.
How can we decode public statues and their visual languages, their objecthood and materiality, their role as media icons, and their voice in political debates?
'... but I drew the Fool, she says: you used to be a nun who lived on landscapes, today, you're as free as you let yourself be'
When his parents were away one night in 1928, a boy started digging as many holes as he he could find space for in his London backyard. When he managed to reach a depth of 120 cm in one of the holes, his spade hit on a ball-shaped object containing 654 Roman coins.
All her work is connected by a curiosity about how we get to know and shape the world through the lenses of words. She views text as material and is interested in the porosity between text and image, in experimental literature and in translation as a multiplier of perception.
From 2017-2018 she was an artist-in-residence at the Jan van Eyck Academie post-academic institute. Her last poetry collection, Veldwerk (Fieldwork, 2020), was nominated for De Grote Poëzieprijs and she was a festival poet at Poetry International in 2021.
At the moment, she is working on a film project and a book-long essay about the materiality of the gaze, that will be launched in April 2026. She also is coordinator of the Writers' Program and advisor at the post academy Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht.
Exhibition text LUCA May I Kiss you? Drawing Centre Diepenheim, 2026
Het oog dat niet leest, column Jan Hanlo Essayprijs, 2025
Onder een stolp, essay for AgriValley, Mirte van Duppen, 2022
Essay, Onzichtbare inkt, De Gids, 2022
Landschapskijkers, essay, de Revisor, 2022
Binnenpost, online correspondence with Alfred Schaffer, SLAA x de Revisor, 2020
Preface Decoding Dictatorial Statues, Onomatopee publishers/ Set Margins, 2019/2026
In de fuik van de taal, essay for Mr. Motley x Holland Festival, 2019
CV
CONTACT
bernke.begint@gmail.com
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