ORE
(Observatory of Radical Empathies)
Mouse-sized editorial project dedicated to explore nonhuman imaginaries through artist’s books and independent publications.










Project 01: Publication

cambiarealguaanuestrofavor

 Collaborator: Beaver (Castor Canadensis)

cambiarelaguaanuestrofavor (turningthewaterstoourfavor) is the first edition of the Observatory of Radical Empathies.

This zine is the first publication in a larger body of work named A Study of Beaverness by artist Marianne Hoffmeister and collaborators. It explores a beaver-centered imaginary and proposes an encounter with a piece of wood carved by a beaver as an unreadable inscription. 

From this encounter emerges an attempt to imagine a shared language, developed throughout the publication as a speculative typeface derived from beaver tooth marks.


Year: 2022
Design: ORE and Patricio González
Type: Publication
Dimensions: 5.3” x 9.4”
Pages: 24
Binding: Staple Bound
Process: Risograph by OjoporOjo
Ink Color: Orange
Language: Spanish
Edition Size: 300
Insert: 11 x 17 two-sided poster

This publication was possible thanks to the support of
Núcleo de Lenguaje y Creación  

Project 03: Publication

Sharp-Toothed Dreams 

Collaborator: Beaver (Castor Canadensis)


Sharp-Toothed Dreams (Sueños de Dientes Afilados) is a story about a young beaver who, at a moment of transition in her life, is visited by visions and dreams through which the stories of her ancestors unfold across different territories, hemispheres, and eras. Told as a fable in a speculative beaver language, the story imagines the life, possible concerns, and dreams of another animal while also establishing the animal as a historical subject capable of revisiting and knowing its own history.


Year: 2024
Design: ORE and PUBLICAR
Type: Publication
Dimensions: 4.84" x 9.37"
Pages: 52
Cover: Screenprinted and debossed cover
Binding: Smyth Sewn Binding
Printing: Offset by Alerce
Language: English
ISBN: 978-956-8695-58-3
Edition Size: 300


Co-published with PUBLICAR  and the support of
Núcleo de Lenguaje y Creación





Figure 2

Project 03: Publication

In The Nameless Hour of the Night

Collaborator: Deer Mouse (Peromyscus)


In The Nameless Hour of the Night follows the nighttime movements of a group of deer mice that lived in the artist’s kitchen between 2020 and 2021. Filmed using a motion-activated camera, it captures brief moments of the mice exploring, escaping, and engaging in swift encounters with other inhabitants of the domestic ecosystem.

In tune with the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, the piece shifts our focus to the small and often overlooked worlds that exist alongside us in our homes. By showing the mice as curious and active participants in a shared space, the work encourages us to notice different ways of living and being. It gently reminds us of the many forms of life—each with its own constellation of bodies, whiskers, feelers, and ways of sensing—that animate our surroundings every day.


Year: 2025
Type: Publication
Dimensions: 5" x 8"
Pages: 32
Cover: Plus Cover
Binding: Staple Bound with black staples
Process: Risograph
Ink Colors: Black and White
Paper: 80#c Domtar Cougar Digital Smooth Natural, 70#t Domtar Cougar Digital Smooth Natural, 60#t Neenah Astrobrights Epic Black
Language: English
Edition Size: 300
Insert: 4 postcards

Co-published with Issue Press  

*Detail image courtesy Issue Press 

Project 04: Publication

An Index of Chomps

Collaborator: Beaver (Castor Canadensis)


This publication presents a fragment of a growing collection of 52 beaver-gnawed wood shavings gathered in Pennsylvania and Michigan for the project  A Study of Beaverness by Marianne Hoffmeister Castro. The project as a whole explores a beaver-centric imaginarium, tracing the animal as a historical figure through encounters with humans across time, localities, and hemispheres.

Drawing on field research methods, the collection closely attends to the beaver’s gesture, the traces they leave behind, and the world that becomes legible through them. 

Year: 2026
Type: Publication
Dimensions: 4" x 9.5"
Pages: 40
Cover: Plus Cover
Binding: Staple Bound with orange staples
Process: Risograph
Ink Colors:
Paper: 80#c Domtar Cougar Digital Smooth Natural, 70#t Domtar Cougar Digital Smooth Natural, 60#t Cosmic Orange Astrobright
Language: English
Insert: belly band
Edition Size: 500

Co-published with Issue Press  

*PUBLICATION IMAGES ARE CURRENTLY BEING PREPARED
















ABOUT  



The Observatory of Radical Empathies (ORE) is a mouse-sized editorial platform dedicated to experimental publishing and artists’s books that propose alternative multi-species relationships and scenarios. Through tender affects, respectful curiosities, humor, and non-anthropocentric storytelling focusing on nonhuman animals, ORE seeks to shape generative solidarities and to be a refuge where new methodologies of imaging and speculation can operate in favor of all critters that crawl, fly, leap or squeal.

This is a project created by Marianne Hoffmeister and supported by many human and nonhuman collaborators across oceans and mountains. Special tail wags and sniffs to Núcleo de Lenguaje y Creación for their support in the conceptualization of this project.  

KIN

Núcleo de Lenguaje y Creación (CL)
PUBLICAR (CL)
Interspecies Library (US)
Issue Press (US)

Logo
Patricio González / W Type Foundry (CL)

For inquiries and collaborations: 
@observatory.re


 
[Birds chirping] [Distant crow cawing] [Dog barking] [Cat purring softly ] [Water gurgling] [Squawking continues] [Faint buzzing at the distance] [Bird trills]  [Crickets chirping] [Chorus of frogs at dusk] [A growl at a distance] [Cicadas screaming] [Wings flapping]


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