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 Maria Paris; 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 Maria Paola Sánchez Forero and Diego Uribe. Together they have the publishing house Hambre Libros in Bogotá. As two of us shared our mother tongue with Maria Paola and Diego, we did it entirely in Spanish. If you don’t have a Spanish-speaking friend to give you a hand, you can read here in English about what happened.

Hambre libros es una editorial colombiana de literatura ilustrada. Trabajamos de la mano de diferentes artistas y estamos al acecho de libros olvidados, salvajes y peligroso

Hambre libros is a Colombian publishing house of illustrated books. We work alongside different artists, and we are on the lookout for forgotten, wild and dangerous books.
https://nada.com.co/HAMBRE-1

This is a very particular session, because they are indeed two sessions. What you are going to listen is the second round from an earlier conversation we had with them, which its recording unfortunately got lost. We still would like to share some lines on the wonderful first chat we shared with them.

In Spanish, Hambre means Hunger, a call in your guts that puts you in movement, that leads you to action. Going through the books they published and what they organised around them, we saw how reading and books can as well call for action. They invite different illustrators for each one of their publications to accompany and retell the story through drawing. In the presentation of the books, people see themselves immersed in the landscapes of Alaska or sing karaoke together. Translation became a space to wonder about translating using one’s own voice and what implies to be dead and out of the law.

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.