Johan Muyle and Raoul Vaneigem's Artist Book 'Plus d'opium pour le peuple'

Published by B.P.S.22, 'Plus d'opium pour le peuple' is an artist book by Johan Muyle, accompanying his eponymous exhibition at the Charleroi contemporary art center. Rather than a conventional catalogue, the book functions as an artist's book, using pop-ups, pull-tabs, and cut-out pages to animate Muyle's kinetic sculptures. These sculptures are made from toys and found objects collected during his travels in India and Africa. The book allows readers to make a skeletal cyclist traverse a chasm, raise the phallus of an antique bicorne gendarme, or don the same Aztec-sardine crown Muyle wears on the cover. Raoul Vaneigem contributes a text titled 'L'Enfant dans la chambre des machines', interpreting Muyle's work as a childlike, disenchanted resistance against commodification. Vaneigem argues that in a world where only price matters, such playful creation injects humanity into the grinding machine of commerce.