Tomorrow Now: Design Meets Sci-Fi at Mudam Luxembourg

The exhibition 'Tomorrow Now – quand le design rencontre la science-fiction' at Mudam Luxembourg (May 25–September 24, 2007) explores the collision between design and science fiction. Curated by Alexandra Midal and Björn Dahlström, the show opens with Futuro Home (1968) by Matti Suuronen, a plastic flying-saucer-shaped ski cabin. The curators trace the origins of this encounter to the 1939 New York World's Fair, where Norman Bel Geddes presented Futurama in the General Motors pavilion: visitors on a moving conveyor belt viewed a model of a futuristic 1960 megacity. The exhibition's scenography by Mathieu Lehanneur features a black polyurethane mountain-like base displaying Japanese robot toys from the early 1960s, referencing César's industrial pop sculptures and post-Hiroshima robotic imagery. Works include chairs suspended without legs (like the Panton chair on an air column), and Gianni Motti's video 'Ufo Cult' (2003) showing Brigitte Boisselier and Raël. The show also references H.H. Holmes, a 19th-century serial killer who designed his house as a killing machine, as identified by Midal in her 2006 essay 'Raisons et sentiments, le design au cœur des passions'. The exhibition critiques how design substitutes a horizontal temporality for linear history, killing the future as J.G. Ballard described.