“They not only keep the roof up, but also include and exclude”: MacGuffin Issue 14 explores The Wall

A long revered publication and platform, MacGuffin uniquely explores life, culture, collaborations and curiosities through the lens of a single object which changes issue to issue – from string, wardrobes and chains to trousers and rugs. Now, they welcome their latest edition: The Wall.

Following the “pandemic bestsellers” of 2020, The Desk and The Rug, the team at MacGuffin celebrated their tenth anniversary with The Bottle. However, in the last four issues the team have gradually “moved to objects with a more engaged mentality,” says founding editor of MacGuffin Kirsten Algera. With issues the likes of The Log or The Letter, Kirsten says that the team aimed to become a self and social aware platform, “which address[es] topics like activism, exclusion, environmental issues, and local empowerment.” Their latest issue is certainly a continuation of

With this spirit in mind, prior to their 13th issue The Letter, MacGuffin ran a trip to Egypt – something that greatly impacted the platform going ahead. “We studied the empowerment of street typography and typography archives,” Kirsten says. “This trip, just after the Gaza war started, inspired us to choose The Wall as our latest subject,” a physical, poetic, emotional and metaphorical object that, arguably, is emblematic of the world’s current temperature. “It is an object that is hard to ignore in these times, unfortunately,” Kirsten adds. The decision also came from wanting to explore something a little more “physical” than paper, finding both the idea and the object a rich ground to tackle. “They not only keep the roof up, but also include and exclude,” Kirsten says. “They force us to reflect on the paradoxes of openness and isolation, of enclosure and exclusion.”

Issue 14’s exploration of The Wall approaches the topic through both a cultural and historical lens, looking back on how the structure has been explored retrospectively, such as an interview with Rem Koolhaas about his 1972 project, Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture. “When he was still studying at the AA in London, he went to Berlin where he studied the entire perimeter of the Berlin wall,” examining it from both West and East Berlin, Kirsten explains. “He was intrigued by the reversal of fact that the East Germans had encircled West Berlin, yet West Berlin felt freer.” 

Now, half a century on, Rem discusses in Issue 14 just how influential the Berlin Wall has become in contemporary culture, relating it to today’s political obsession with building walls. Similarly, MacGuffin highlights Mariam Shamma’s study Shadow on the Walls. Featuring an ongoing series of diagram drawings of border fences, “it’s an expanding digital database offering an overview of walls around the world as representations of oppression,” Kirsten says. In light of this, “we hope the issue not only gives a little bit more context to walls, but also pauses for thought,” Kirsten concludes. “This world is drowning in borders and barriers, what is it that we want to protect? And why?”