Valerian blos shows Speculative design in the light of materials

There is a dinner table at the center of Valerian Blos’s practice. Not a real one, though he has built a few, and this table appears in Substance of Power, a performance installation where guests sit beneath red light, surrounded by neuron -shaped ceramic dishes and architectural miniatures slowly crumbling under piles of vermillion sand and cracking salt. Each evening, the guests are invited to taste something: a substance, an idea, a truth they would rather not confront. The substances change each night. One evening it was mercury, then, plastic. Another, the quiet accumulation of technological consumption entering the body with the food chain and the air.

It’s not a comfortable meal, and that’s the point. Valerian Blos uses the table as a metaphor for ‘friction.’ The Berlin-based designer, artist, and educator’s practice moves between installation, speculative design, material research, and teaching.…