How can we talk about electronics without starting with technology? How can an exhibition help us understand systems that remain largely invisible in everyday life? And what happens when, instead of presenting ready-made answers, we create a space where people can slow down, interact and begin asking questions?
These ideas shaped UNPLUGGED, an exhibition developed within the CIRCOTRONIC project as an experimental way of communicating the challenges of the Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) sector and its transition towards circularity.
The exhibition opened in Szczecin, Poland, before beginning a journey across Europe. Its travelling format brought UNPLUGGED to Košice in Slovakia, Linz in Austria, Munich in Germany, Ljubljana in Slovenia, and Bologna in Italy, allowing the ideas and questions developed within CIRCOTRONIC to enter different cultural, academic and professional contexts.
Rather than functioning as a conventional presentation of project results, UNPLUGGED became a space for meeting, knowledge exchange and reflection — bringing the complex topics of energy, electronics, waste and circular design closer to everyday human experience.
Making the invisible visible
One of the starting points for UNPLUGGED was a simple observation: although electrical and electronic devices surround us, the systems behind them remain largely invisible.
We use electricity without thinking about where it comes from. We replace devices without necessarily knowing what happens to them afterwards. Materials, energy, global supply chains and electronic waste disappear behind the seamless surfaces of products designed to make technology appear effortless.
Research conducted during the development of the exhibition identified this invisibility as one of the central challenges facing the sector. It also raised broader questions about continuous economic growth, accelerating technological change and the increasing number of devices entering our lives.
UNPLUGGED therefore approached circularity not only as a technical challenge, but as a cultural and social one.
From exhibition to experience
The project deliberately experimented with the exhibition format.
UNPLUGGED first opened at the Scandinavian House in Szczecin, where exhibition objects became part of an existing domestic environment. Instead of entering a traditional white-cube gallery, participants entered a familiar space. They became guests rather than conventional exhibition visitors, while the curators assumed the role of hosts.
The change of context was intentional. A familiar, safe environment created space for conversations that might not emerge during a formal presentation or conference. Shared food, play, movement and interaction became tools for introducing knowledge and encouraging reflection.
The exhibition also moved beyond an ocular-centric approach in which visitors primarily look at objects and read information. Touch, movement, conversation and social interaction became equally important ways of experiencing its content.
Following its opening in Poland, UNPLUGGED became a travelling exhibition, moving through five further European cities: Košice, Linz, Munich, Ljubljana and Bologna. Each stop provided a new context in which the exhibition could initiate conversations about electronics, energy and circularity. In this sense, travelling was not simply a way of disseminating project results. It allowed the exhibition to function as a mobile platform for knowledge exchange, connecting CIRCOTRONIC with new audiences and perspectives across Central Europe.
At the centre of this approach was Be Here Now, a game created specifically for UNPLUGGED. Inspired by human energy and our relationship with electricity, it consists of simple tasks encouraging participants to interact, move, laugh and focus on the present moment. Developed through research into sustainable design and the EEE sector, the game later received a nomination in the Product Design category of Poland’s Advertising Creators Club Competition.
The game was not an addition to the exhibition. It was part of its research and communication methodology: a way of creating relationships between participants before asking them to engage with complex questions.
Creating room for better questions
UNPLUGGED demonstrated that communicating circularity does not necessarily mean presenting more information.
Sometimes, before acquiring new knowledge, we need to create space for it.
This was particularly important because the questions emerging from the project did not have simple answers:
Why is the EEE sector almost invisible within contemporary design discourse? Why do we behave as though electricity were an unlimited resource? Why are product ageing and growing volumes of electronic waste so difficult to address? What role should designers play in changing these systems?
The exhibition became a place where such questions could be explored collectively rather than resolved through a single expert perspective. This approach echoed the wider CIRCOTRONIC experience: circular transformation requires collaboration between design, science, industry, business and public institutions.
It also reflected lessons gathered from observing international design and cultural events, where art, science and speculative thinking increasingly meet to imagine alternative futures. As explored through the idea of a “pragmatic utopia”, imagining different futures becomes meaningful when imagination is connected with practical action.
Exhibitions as spaces for knowledge exchange
UNPLUGGED ultimately tested something broader than a new way of presenting the CIRCOTRONIC project.
It explored the exhibition itself as a tool for knowledge creation and exchange.
From its opening in Szczecin to its journey through Slovakia, Austria, Germany, Slovenia and Italy, UNPLUGGED demonstrated how a travelling exhibition can carry not only objects and information, but also questions, conversations and new ways of thinking from one context to another.
By changing the environment, engaging different senses and creating opportunities for informal interaction, the exhibition allowed participants to encounter the EEE sector from a different perspective. Knowledge was not simply displayed; it emerged through experience, conversation and relationships between people.
For circular design, this matters. Transformation requires tools and technologies, but it also requires opportunities to reconsider familiar systems and imagine alternatives.
UNPLUGGED showed that exhibitions can provide such opportunities.
Sometimes the first step towards changing a system is not presenting another solution, but creating the conditions in which people feel able to ask:
Why does it work this way — and could it work differently?