Mariana Castillo Deball Livres

Kaleidoscopic Eye departs from an argument between André Breton and Roger Caillois. The confrontation arose from their discovery of Mexican jumping beans—beans that make sudden movements and leap into the air. Caillois conjectured that larva or some other animal was making the beans move. Breton rejected his theory, accusing Caillois of being a closed-minded positivist who negated the marvelous and the poetic in his attempt to find rational explanation. For Breton, absolute or objective chance blurred the borders of rationality, proffering a chaotic and stimulating universe: convulsive beauty. Caillois wrote a letter ending the relationship with Breton, declaring his attempt to reconcile research with beauty. Caillois sought to examine chance, chaos, and the irrational with the goal of finding a pattern similar to the structure of coral. T his structure should combine, in one system, everything that had until then been systematically excluded—a structure capable of taking into consideration all the possible forms of reality. Kaleidoscopic Eye was first published as part of the exhibition Kaleidoscopic Eye, in 2009 at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, now re-published in it’s second edition.

According to Roy Wagner's anthropological approach, the unspoken, the unheard, and the unknown are just as important as what is there. The absences, described by Wagner as "anti-twins," are essential to the formation of culture and the study thereof. In this notebook, Mariana Castillo Deball creates a two-level communication with the re-printing of a text excerpted from Wagner's writings. On one level, the conversation unfolds between Wagner and his anti-twin Coyote, who expresses what is absent while also countering Wagner's statements. On the other, the artist's filigree drawings--of fantasy figures and objects, closely related to Mexican folklore, and especially produced for this notebook--accompany and comment on Wagner's text. -- Publisher's description

A compilation of 24 titles in one single publication! Join us in this literary journey throughout different topics and subject matters: archaeology, contemporary gardening, magic, history of technology, mysticism, tourist guides, autobiography, archival techniques, monuments in motion, and more! The aim of „Never Odd or Even“ is to develop collaborative projects in which the distribution is not a final stage, but a central part of the process. Distribution understood as a way to occupy or invade different contexts. In each project, multiples and diverse objects work as performative devices, the importance is how are they disseminated and how they can generate a territory.