MacGuffin

MacGuffin – The Life of Things is a Dutch editorial project. In themed magazines, presentations, and podcasts, MacGuffin examines the objects around us and uses them as a starting point to explore the historical, social, and political aspects they represent. As with the MacGuffins in Hitchcock’s films, the objects are not the main characters, but plot devices that set the story in motion. The strongly interdisciplinary approach that the curators, Kirsten Algera and Ernst van der Hoeven, propose is able to explore and put into perspective the main philosophical, social, and political theories of our time.

To explore the topic in the publishing field, the Festival hosted the installation Chain chain chain, dedicated to the new issue The Chain focused on the object of the chain. From hip-hop jewellery to resistance movements, from new slavery to blockchain technologies, the work explores our complex relationship with the chain and its contrasting characteristics of connection, decoration, and constraint. The eight posters that compose the installation represent a selection of key images and articles from the eleventh issue that can be removed and taken home by the visitor, creating in their turn a chain of relationships.
Along with the installation, the room also features a podcast corner where visitors can listen to the 2Chains podcast series created by researchers and curators Alix de Massiac and Alex Furtado Melville.

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Kirsten Algera and Ernst van der Hoeven are writers, curators, educators and co-founders of MacGuffin, a design research platform exploring the life of ordinary things. In themed magazines, presentations and podcasts MacGuffin explores the personal and sometimes curious relationships we have with the stuff that surrounds us.

Website of the project

XII edition
The life of things
and  the invisible qualities of objects
22 – 28 September 2022

Venue:
Teatro Carcano
Corso di Porta Romana, 63,
MM3 Crocetta, Milan