Design has long ceased to be seen as a discipline of aesthetics and functionality. It looks for possibilities, using imagination as its inspiration to find opportunities to create more habitable worlds of tomorow. This exhibition is devoted to themes of the distant and near future possibilities.
An exhibition of Near Future Laboratory's Work Kit of Design Fiction at the GRASSI Museum of Applied Arts in Leipzig, Germany. The Work Kit of Design Fiction is exhibited, providing a hands-on experience for attendees and a grounded approach to imagining futures. The exhibition is divided into three chapters and is devoted to themes of the distant and near future. Included in these themes are proposals from the fields of art and design, which use speculative methods to make different futures visible and tangible. Symbiotic, post-human, and interspecies relationships are the focus. We question the role and responsibility of humans within the ecosystem. The emphasis is on cooperation with microorganisms, cohabitation with animals and plants, or the protection of Martian inhabitants. Visitors encounter not only post-apocalyptic futures, but also positive and desirable ones. Nevertheless, one thing is clear: human behavior must change fundamentally, and swiftly.