The exhibition ‘The Next Big Thing is Not a Thing’ at Bureau Europa, Maastricht (NL) relates the evolving field of design to the one of anthropology. Using the gaze as a metaphor, the exhibition surveys the design discipline, its expanding horizons and its critical self-reflection.
Acknowledging the limits of perspective as an inescapable given, the exhibition reflects on the relation between the human, the environment and technological tools and systems.
As agency begins to shift outside of direct human control, the exhibition asks: ‘Who is surveying whom?’