«Owing to a defect in the film the magicians head is invisible» was the subtitle of a published damaged image plate in anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski’s renowned book «Coral Gardens and their magic» (1935).

Curiously in his ambitious anthropological study of the trobriand garden magic «Coral gardens and their magic» the picture that depicts a Taytu ceremonial is defaced by an image defect.

In a photographically documented archive research, I follow the entanglements that led to the publishing of the corrupted image.

«Owing to a defect in the film the magician’s head is invisible» was part of my 2019 completed dissertation with the title «Techno-magical entanglement of Modernity» at the faculty of applied art and culture studies at Kunstuniversität Linz.