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Decapitated Economies

Decapitated Economies
Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin, eds.
intercalations: paginated exhibition

English
672 pages
13 × 21 cm
Full color, richly illustrated
Softcover with flaps, thread-sewn, Otabind spine
ISBN: 978-3-9818635-3-6
33€

This long-awaited collection of carefully assembled contributions explores a wide spectrum of headlessness and its many operational forms—ranging from the invention of the guillotine to the maintenance of museum repositories, annual shareholder reports to Indigenous sovereignty struggles, neuroscientific advancements to brain surgery narratives, as well as the housing crisis, ocean pollution, settlement and cerealization, wheat banks, political murder, human extinction, and much more.

The editors are especially honored to include in this publication a conversation with James C. Scott, recorded in anticipation of the release of his landmark book, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Sadly, Jim passed in July 2024, before we were able to complete this extensive collection. With a deep gratitude for his generosity and intellectual inspiration, we’ve excerpted the conversation and made the PDF available as a direct download here. If you’d like to access the full publication, feel free to place it in your cart.

Institutional partner: The intercalations: paginated exhibition series was made possible by the Schering Stiftung and is co-published with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin, in the framework of “The Anthropocene Project”—an initiative of HKW in cooperation with the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Deutsches Museum, Munich, the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam).
Co-published with Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.

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The Currency 12" Vinyl

Elom 20ce, Musquiqui Chihying, and Gregor Kasper
French, German, Mandarin
31×31 cm, 12" Vinyl
Commissioned byTimes Art Center Berlin
Published by Sternberg Press
ISBN 978-3-95679-578-7
24€

The Currency by Elom 20ce, Musquiqui Chihying, and Gregor Kasper is a vinyl record, its golden hue reminiscent of a wafer – one of the thin silicon discs used in microchip production. The rap song of the same name on the A-side is a collaboration between artists Musquiqui Chihying (Taipei/Berlin), Gregor Kasper (Berlin), and rapper Elom 20ce (Lomé), who identifies as a griot, a traditional West African storyteller, oral historian, and singer.

The lyrics, in French, Mandarin, and German, offer a poetic reflection on various overlooked aspects of contemporary culture and economy: the entanglement of digital payment systems in China (WeChat and AliPay) with the daily lives of their users, whose every movement and action are visible to the state and market, subjecting them to constant surveillance; the introduction of the new ECO currency, intended to replace the CFA franc in eight West African nations by the end of 2020, marking a significant step towards monetary independence for these countries; and the widespread, idealised notion of a clean, free, and fair digital cloud, which disregards the material realities behind it, such as the industries involved in wafer production and other electronic hardware, and the labour conditions therein.

The B-side features The Hubs, a sound piece that includes a conversation with Sénamé Koffi Agbodjinou (Lomé/Paris) – architect, anthropologist, and founder of FabLab – accompanied by music composed by Elom 20ce. In the WoeLab “open hardware” workshop in Lomé, Togo, Agbodjinou introduced an alternative digital barter currency that functions through social activity and local services as its medium of exchange.

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© 2026 Musquiqui Lab

© 2026
Musquiqui Lab