The Object is Absent is an optimistic manifest for less materialistic design. We urgently need to create new relationships and values between people and between things and people. MU took a radical step in the right direction with The Object is Absent during Dutch Design Week 2019. Without objects, but with designers and their attitudes, ideas, their lives and their spirit. A constantly moving exhibition in which it is not the things that are the focal point, but the doing. Acting design, singing design, dancing design, hearing design and tasting design. With this, they took a leap towards an all-encompassing new way of being: a healthy and interesting lifestyle without waste and without inequality.

A little like ‘the emperor’s new clothes’, The Object is Absent challenges the whole field and makes it interesting. There is a lot of discussion about products and the usefulness of designing and production. It is good to stimulate this discussion in terms of the body and experience. There is a beautiful ritually layered quality to the context and the implementation of the exhibition. Although it seems to contradict our profession, the absence of objects in a message like this is perhaps necessary in order to generate new ways of designing. Ways we are seeing more and more: making more impact with less, giving priority to the design process of luxury aesthetics and stripping products of all unnecessary fuss. A topical and significant discussion.