The Observatory of Radical Empathies is a shape-shifting editorial platform that focuses on experimental writing and artist’s books as multi-species meeting-places to propose alternative human-nonhuman relationships and scenarios. The Observatory aims to shape generative and conscientious solidarities towards nonhuman worlds with swarming affects and respectful curiosities: a space where new methodologies of imaging and ecological speculation can operate in favor of those that crawl, fly, leap or squeal.
The Observatory first’s edition is cambiarelaguaanuestrofavor, a collaboration with ︎︎︎Núcleo de Lenguaje y Creación and my project ︎︎︎ A Study of Beaverness 🦫
This zine cambiarelaguaanuestrofavor (turnthewatertoourfavor) is the first printed publication of the Observatory of Radical Empathies. This work introduces us the process of development of one of the pieces of this world-building project, the CASTOR typography - an experimental typeset based on teeth marks and patterns on a found piece of wood gnawed by a beaver. The publication delves into the process of creating this typeset but also the impossibility to fully translate or use it, posing questions about the ways we use/impose human models of subjectivity to render nonhuman animals, as well as matters of legibility, opacity and signification. Having a conceptual life of its own, this typeset becomes a tool for play and multispecies dreams.
cambiarelaguaanuestrofavor published by The Observatory of Radical Empathies (Spanish). Risograph. Design: Patricio Truenos. Concept and text: Marianne Hoffmeister. Printed in Santiago, Chile
