PROJECTS
MacGuffin The Letter – Il7arf
Cairo, 5 – 12 November 2023
Coinciding with The Letter issue of the magazine, MacGuffin collaborated with Archief Cairo, a collective based in Egypt, to organise a temporary design studio in November 2023. This event brought together a diverse group of young image-makers, designers, and writers from the region. With the ethos of MacGuffin Magazine in mind, the Arab world was considered through the eyes of the letter, investigating the use and reuse of vernacular typography in the Middle East. During the week around 15 designers and thinkers guided one another through a series of field trips, including visits to the IFAO, home to the world's last hieroglyphic printing press and the calligrapher Khodeir El Borsaidy, whose typography dominated the Egyptian film world in the 1970s. There were also lectures by, among others, designer Kinda Ghannoum of the Syrian Design Archive and by researcher Ghalia Elsrakbi on the 'vernacular type lab' she organises in Egypt. The trip culminated in a workshop co-organised with Archief Cairo. A publication showcasing the results of the workshop is currently being put together and will be launched in Cairo in the spring of 2024.
INDEPENDENT SCHOOL FOR THE CITY X MACGUFFIN
Wall to Wall
Mildam/Rhoon, 22 January 2023
Decades before recycled waste became a design mantra, artists Louis le Roy and Krijn Giezen put the adagio 'Waste = Material' into practice. In January 2023 MacGuffin and the Independent School for the City organized a field club to two of Louis le Roy’s and Krijn Giezen's magna opera, le Roy’s forever growing ‘Ecokathedraal' (in Mildam) and Krijn Giezen’s botanical sound barrier (Rhoon). Le Roy expert Piet Vollaard, artist and former Krijn Giezen student Arnoud Holleman and Ecokathedraal “groundkeeper” Peter Wouda paved the paths and elaborated on the context of these perpetual designs for a group of curious students, seasoned connoisseurs and amateur waste fans.
FRAMER FRAMED X MACGUFFIN
CHAINS
Amsterdam, 17 January 2023
In January 2023 Framer Framed, a platform for visual culture and critical theory in Amsterdam, hosted the launch of CHAINS, a MacGuffin podcast by Alix de Massiac. In the five-part podcast series, De Massiac paints a portrait of the Amsterdamse Stadsbank van Lening, a four-hundred-year-old pawnshop that’s a unique combination of business and social service. The Stadsbank lends money, accepting jewellery as collateral. Payment is immediate, but onward sale or melting down are irrevocable if the loan isn’t paid off on time. In Framer Framed, the remarkable story of the Stadsbank and pawning in popular culture, were discussed by podcast maker Alix de Massiac and Marijke Carasso-Kok, author of a book about the history of the Stadsbank.
Photos: Mathijs Labadie/Maarten NauwPodcast link here.
VIDEO SOUND ART FESTIVAL X MACGUFFIN
Chain Chain Chain
Milan, 22 - 28 September 2022
The twelfth edition of the Video Art Sound Festival in Milan is a program of installations, videos, podcasts and publications revolving around The Life of Things - the “unexplored possibilities that objects holds in relation to history, identity and social relationships, trying to unveil the invisible qualities of matter.” MacGuffin joins the festival with a necklace related poster installation and the launch of the podcast CHAINS. Stacks of posters on the stage of Teatro Carcano in Milan combine images and articles from the 11th edition of MacGuffin Magazine, as in a chain reaction. Meanwhile the first episode of the podcast can be listened to, accompanied by a digital visual essay.
Podcast link here.
RÖHSSKA MUSEUM OF DESIGN AND CRAFT X MACGUFFIN
Migration – The Journey of Objects
Gothenburg, 23 October 2021 - 28 August 2022
We live in a world where the boundaries between cultures have become increasingly blurred and migration is ubiquitous. The worldwide circulation of people, objects and knowledge has an enormous influence on every aspect of our lives. The exhibition Migration shows that the transformative impact of migration is not reserved to modern times, but has been a shaping factor in design and crafts since its earliest days. What journey have objects undertaken before ending up in the museum collection? How can we understand why similar motifs and patterns appear in different cultures and periods? In what ways do local resources affect the shape of, and trade in, design? The exhibition that MacGuffin co-curated with the Röhsska Museum deploys over 200 'migrants' from the Röhsska collection to tell stories about their relocation and offer perspectives that rise above historical or national boundaries.
Photos Carl Ander
Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue in Swedish and English, with contributions by Ernst van der Hoeven & Kirsten Algera, Arjun Appadurai, Rachel Dedman, Johan Deurell, Nina Due, Hanneke Grootenboer, Philippa Hobbs, Anna Jansson, Josefin Kilner, Madeleine Miller, Martina Muzi, Dámaso Randulfe, Göran Rydén, Masha Taavoniku, Mirelle van Tulder. Graphic design by Sandra Kassenaar. Photography by Carl Ander. 200 p, full colour, 21 x 27,5 cm, Swiss bound hardcover, English.
Design museum Gent X MacGuffin
The Desk
Gent, 27 March 2021 - 12 September 2021
The desk is more than just the piece of furniture that many of us spend a great deal of time sitting at. It is also a reflection of our ideas about life and work. Its design through the ages says something about social status, roles, and power, sometimes also about the emancipation of its users. Featuring exceptional pieces that MacGuffin selected from the museum’s collection, the exhibition The Desk shows the evolution of writing furniture: from wandering nomad to prestigious showpiece, from civic icon to CEO cockpit and from efficient factory to the centre of our domestic life.
DISARMING DESIGN FROM PALESTINE X MACGUFFIN
The Rug
Birzeit, 2020
In 2020 MacGuffin teamed up with emerging designers from Palestine and filmmaker Alexandre Humbert to investigate the production, use and meaning of rugs in Palestine. The project portrayed the complexities and modern-day realities of the Palestinian diaspora — bringing together previously unheard voices and giving them resonance. Rugs and carpets are staged as witnesses of personal histories that take place under the surface of mainstream narratives. The research was presented in the form of a series of short movies in Birzeit and Amsterdam.
Barriers - Rawan Bazbazat video: https://vimeo.com/505235056 Photos: Rawan Bazbazat, Khalid Ladadwah, Lara Salous
XML ARCHITECTS X MACGUFFIN
Talk Show Typologies
MU & Design Academy, Eindhoven, 2019 - 2020
In the industry of manufacturing public opinion in 24-hour news cycles, the talk show is the engine room and the talk show desk the engine block. What constitutes the space of the talk show? In MacGuffin Magazine Nº 8, a presentation at MU and a workshop at the Design Academy Eindhoven, MacGuffin and XML Architects analyse the architecture of talk shows, providing insight into their inner dynamics as vessels for collective imagination and public opinion.
Photos XML, Boudewijn Bollmann
ALEXANDRE HUMBERT X MACGUFFIN
The Rug - Host of Imagination
Design Academy Eindhoven, 2020
In 1967, Michel Foucault defined the concept of Heterotopia, the idea that a physical object can host imagination. In 2020, nineteen students from the Design Academy Eindhoven used the context of confinement to explore their rugs. Their rooms — in Brooklyn, London, Ljubljana, Paris, Boyle, Prague and Eindhoven — became their film sets, their phones became their cameras, and the constraints imposed by confinement became design opportunities. In collaboration with MacGuffin and Alexandre Humbert they produced a collection of two-minute films, capturing rugs as spaces of illusion.
Filmstills © Meghan Clark, Pete Fung, Paul Bès, Weixiao Shen
https://vimeo.com/channels/157018
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GUANGZHOU TRIENNIAL X MACGUFFIN
The Guangzhou Wedding of Things
Guangdong Museum of Art, 2018/2019
To highlight unacknowledged African immigrants in China, MacGuffin joined forces with filmmaker Alexandre Humbert and local students to collect objects that represent Chinese and African cultures in Guangzhou. The installation staged remarkable weddings between them: Joss Paper Lacoste Shoes married Mao-Inspired Chadian Suits, iPhone Step Increasers married Nigerian Karaoke Mics, and Guangzhou Anti-Radiation Maternity Aprons tied the knot with Chinese Wigs.
Filmstills © MacGuffin, Alexandre Humbert https://vimeo.com/326538524
ECAL X MacGuffin
The Life of Things
Istanbul Design Biennial, 2018
Luma Arles, 2019
Z33 Hasselt, 2019
Can a magazine be a design school? Or a design school a magazine? In 2018, ECAL Product Design used MacGuffin’s editorial model as a methodology to study the use of everyday things. Their research resulted in an exciting collection of narratives and objects, presented in Istanbul and Hasselt. From Umbrella Stories and Wheel Stoppers to Real-Life Rulers and a platform for the Bottom of Things.
Photos © ECAL/Benoît Jeannet and © Joana Luz
HET NIEUWE INSTITUUT X MACGUFFIN
Finders Keepers
Rotterdam, 2017/2018
Inspired by Orhan Pamuk’s Modest Manifesto for a Museum, in which the writer makes the case for a museum that centers on everyday life objects, the exhibition Finders Keepers explored stories of collectors and their relationships to things. MacGuffin brought together more than 5000 everyday life objects from over 40 collections in a Grand Parade of everything, from razors to ropes and from coffee lids to traffic cones.
Photos © Mathijs Labadie and filmstills © Mels van Zutphen
https://finderskeepers.hetnieuweinstituut.nl
ATELIER CLERICI X MACGUFFIN
The Life of Sinks
Palazzo Clerici Milan, 2017
The alluring life of The Sink was celebrated in Milan with an exhibition of related items chosen by a select group of sink users and aficionados. They motivated their choice of sink-related ‘MacGuffins’ in a series of mini-documentary podcasts, celebrating their love for kitchen towels, siphons, taps and grinders.
Photos © Delfino Sisto Legnani
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