From the Apartheid wall in Palestine to the digital paywall, from memorial murals in Jamaica to the increasingly tall glass facades of modern office blocks, walls testify to the tumult of history and humanity’s ceaseless urge to communicate and to sow division. They force us to reflect on the paradoxes of openness and isolation, of enclosure and exclusion. In a world drowning in borders, barriers and barbed-wire fences, this issue of MacGuffin pauses for thought and asks: What exactly do we want to express or protect? And why?
Contributors to this issue include Seb Amina, Simone Atangano Bekono, Warren Brodey, Rasha Dakkak, Nienke Denekamp, Emily King, Kim Knoppers, Anniina Koivu, Rem Koolhaas, Larissa Laban, Ibrahim Mahama, Tracian Meikle, Zhedy Lena Nuentsa, Karin Nygård, Ellef Prestaeter, Hugo Rocci, Scheltens & Abbenes, Jack Self, Mariam Shamma, Doortje Smithuijsen, István Virag, Madeleine Weavers and Henk Wildschut and many more.
216 p, 210 x 275 mm, English, SRP Europe € 23, ISSN 2405-8203.
MacGuffin Nº12 The Log takes a walk in the woods to explore the design and politics of timber. From the last Norwegian trunks that floated down the Glomma to the indigenous logs that help map the Amazon, and from Jamaican lacebark trees to online chatbots: meet the logs that function as totems, design tools, oracles, wormholes, comic figures, activist artworks, village idiots, prison cells, logbooks, nightmares and dreams. Featuring: James Beckett, José Bessa Freire, Khaled Jarrar, Emily King, Eliot Haworth, Rudy Guedj, Ellef Prestsæter, Olga Prader, Formafantasma, Santídio Pereira, SulSolSal, Max Lamb, Kai Lobjakas, Lou-Lou van Staaveren and many, many more.
From charms and chokers to shackles and fetters, 'MacGuffin 11' explores the many manifestations of that most contradictory of objects: ‘The Chain’. Worn with love since time immemorial, it is also the ultimate symbol of slavery and suffering. Linking together royals and rappers, provocative punks and crashed cars, cycling skirts and classic scarfs, caged wrestlers and medieval warriors, hyperlinks and haunted houses, Baltic protestors and Cuban revolutionaries, 'The Chain' features Inigo Laguda, Jacqueline de Jong, Harris Blondman, Scheltens & Abbenes, Olivia Ahmad, Rab Messina, Kai Lobjakas, and many more.
