Hasta La Ideas

Critical design duo Dunne and Raby have made their contribution to the show in St Etienne this year by displaying some of their most recent “design fictions”; a collection of arresting design proposals that transport the mind to an alternate, perhaps future, world in which products and technology are used very differently.

Seeking to demonstrate the philosphical and aesthetic potential of design freed from market conditions, the works on show explore the possible and probable rather than just the “preferable”. The three projects displayed reveal a distinctly dystopian edge: “Designs for an Overpopulated Planet” (pictured above), for example, exploring how “Foragers” of the future might gather and artifically digest plant matter in a food scarce world.

Battling, as ever, with the question of how best to present their conceptual narratives, the pair have used this exhibition to experiment: layering up their alternate worlds by juxtaposing objects and large-scale images with sculptural text—the communicae of a mysterious, future (and of course fictional) “Humanity Defense Group”, through the lens of which the fictions are explored.

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