Manifold Books
Kraijenhoffstraat 34, 1018RL Amsterdam
Please note: the entrance is located in the corridor between number 30 and 32


A Sunday afternoon around I HAD TO LEAVE TO BE BACK HERE
A Sunday afternoon in and around Selma Selman’s exhibition I HAD TO LEAVE TO BE BACK HERE at Manifold Books, with a reading of her letters to Omer, yet unpublished poetry and a screening of her video Platina. Selma invited Mikolaj Sobczak to share some of his love poems with us, and Dagmar Bosma will be reading from their work in relation to Selma’s.

Manifold Books
25/09/’22, 3:30 – 5pm
Doors open at 3pm
Organised with Esma Moukhtar
Language: English


Dear reader, 

I HAD TO LEAVE TO BE BACK HERE is an affective archive shaped by a work process moving with and through the intimate orbit of the ruins of materialised middle-class desires. Selma Selman allows space for the poetry of these former commodities that narrate circulations of non/value and stuckness imposed by exclusion from the economy as much as bureaucratic force. Here, the objects hold rage, release, insistence, tenderness, and togetherness concentrated in an arrow of time curved in a perpetual ‘coming home’.

Surrounded by these objects and what they hold, we will listen to voices that speak to us from faraway places in an attempt to come closer to someone they love, someone or something they miss, might have lost, and to themselves. How to vocalise the quest for coming home, to arrive in a body, to search for an embodied belonging in the midst of scrapheap, the ruins of what has been destroyed, left behind, taken down, or what was never real? In their writings Selma Selman, Mikolaj Sobczak and Dagmar Bosma demonstrate how words support them on their trip back, wherever they may go, how they move and make their own ways through various Badlands, creating traces for others to follow.

You are very welcome to join us this Sunday!

There are a few chairs available, but you can bring your own cushion to make yourself comfortable on the floor as you listen.

See you then,
Esma Moukhtar


Manifold Books #17
I HAD TO LEAVE TO BE BACK HERE
Selma Selman
03/09/2022 – 08/10/2022

open on Thu-Fri 1-5 pm
& by appointment
location: MAP

Our programme has been made possible by:
Koninklijke Fabrieken Posthumus B.V.
Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds
AFK

We would like to thank:
Nicholas van der Plaats and Bart Overeem



Sofar, Manifold Books has organised shows/projects with:
Ada M. Patterson, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Isabelle Sully and Matt Hinkley (Unbidden Tongues), Hadassah Emmerich, Eileen Quinlan, Melissa Gordon, To See the Inability to See, Ada Van Hoorebeke, Kato Six, Riet Wijnen, Patricia Esquivias, Aglaia Konrad, Özlem Altın, Gwenneth Boelens, Barbara Neves Alves, Baha Görkem Yalım, Martín La Roche Contreras, Dongyoung Lee, Maartje Fliervoet
Recent & ongoing:

Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee online radio show
Lineages – Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s reading group
Listen on http://jajajaneeneenee.com
13/04/2022, 6–7:30 pm

In this reading group, between rongwrong and Manifold Books, we will share and discuss excerpts from Korean-American artist and writer Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s (Busan 1951 – New York 1982) experimental and influential novel Dictée. The session will explore the challenging diversity of genres, textualities, and modes of speech of the unorthodox and undefinable Dictée. Reading out loud excerpts and unpacking how these words, in our guests’ voices, can be “looking for the roots of language before it’s born in the tip of the tongue,” quoting Hak Kyung Cha.


With Maartje Fliervoet, Sara Giannini, Chaelim Kwon, Isabelle Sully, Mia You,  Arnisa Zeqo, Arif Kornweitz and Andrea González.


For this occasion we have permission to live broadcast ‘Monologue,’ an audio piece by Cha. The piece will not be archived.


Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Monologue, 1977, typewritten text on paper, 8.5 x 11 inches, aired on KPFA Radio Station, Berkeley.


This radio show is a live iteration of the reading group Lineages, initiated by Arnisa Zeqo and Sara Giannini at Manifold Books. A close reading on Dictée and a common thread between Between the Teeth, by Isabelle Sully and Matt Hinkley at Manifold Books, and a forthcoming project at rongwrong, curated by Sara Giannini and Arnisa Zeqo. Both focus on the work of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and her legacy.


Fundraiser limited edition Ex Libris stamp
produced on the occasion of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha – Between the Teeth
designed by Isabelle Sully and Matt Hinkley (Unbidden Tongues)
Sponsored by Koninklijke Fabrieken Posthumus B.V.
Available at Manifold Books and via e-mail
€ 100,- each, edition of 25

In 1978, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha created a stamp titled Mot Caché (Hidden Word) for the International Rubber Stamp Design Exhibition at Stempelplaats, held in Amsterdam and speculated to have been organised by Ulises Carrión. Drawing on a connection between Cha and Koninklijke Fabrieken Posthumus B.V.—a long-running family business of stamp makers in whose shop the Stempelplaats was held—Isabelle Sully and Matt Hinkley designed a stamp on the occasion of Between the Teeth, produced in an edition of 25. Funds raised from the sale of the stamp will support Manifold Books’ programme for the coming year, while also providing the purchaser with a small dedication—to whoever they wish to gift a book, and to unbidden tongues everywhere, Cha’s included.





About Manifold Books
Manifold Books’ activities may be best described as a spatial investigation exploring connections between art and books. With each exhibition a few titles are added to its book collection (all including artists’ interventions). Manifold Books has received funding from: the Mondriaan Fund (2019); the AFK (2020). Currently its programme is supported by the AFK, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and Koninklijke Fabrieken Posthumus B.V.

Manifold Books is a foundation with an independent board consisting of:
Arnisa Zeqo (chair)
Stéphanie Noach (secretary)
Paul Domela (treasurer)

Regular opening hours (during presentations only): Fridays and Saturdays from 1-5 pm, or make an appointment via e-mail, Facebook or Instagram



New web-archive coming soon!