DAMN° 93 - Autumn/Winter 2026

THE RUB: FRICTION AND SMOOTHNESS 

What happens when friction becomes something to value rather than eliminate? 

DAMN° 93 explores the productive tensions shaping contemporary culture: between speed and slowness, authority and participation, technology and human unpredictability, preservation and change. 

At the heart of the issue is a special 48-page Artist Pages section created around the reopening of Design Museum Gent after more than four years of renovation. The museum questions what a contemporary design institution can be, opening its collection to new forms of participation and experimentation, while its inaugural exhibition Public Matter(s): Design & Democracy examines the relationship between design and democratic life. 

Beyond the museum, DAMN° 93 brings together some of today’s most compelling voices across art, architecture and design. Andrés Jaque reveals the hidden systems and labour behind architecture; Miet Warlop embraces exhaustion, repetition and instability; and Gabriel Fontana redesigns the rules of sport to challenge fixed ideas of belonging and competition. 

The issue also looks at the power of the Palestinian digital archive to preserve cultural memory, encounters the technologically entangled worlds of Cao Fei, and speaks with Jerszy Seymour about collectivity and alternative ways of living and making together. From new museum models and experimental architecture to Sardinia’s contemporary cultural landscape, DAMN° 93 asks what becomes visible when we stop trying to smooth everything out. 

THE RUB: FRICTION AND SMOOTHNESS is an issue about complexity, resistance and the value of things that take time. 

Friction as evidence, instead of friction as obstacle.