On now at Berlin's Helmrinderknecht Gallery is 'Freak Show: Strategies for (Dis)Engagement in Design'.

With works by Martí Guixé, Stuart Haygarth, Studio Makkink & Bey, as well as new and previously unseen pieces by Pieke Bergmans, Kueng Caputo and Mathieu Lehanneur; the show is a selling exhibition of objects by a very special selection of international designers that think differently and who challenge the system.

"They are the “freaks” that are showing us that design is no longer what we thought it was." explains curator Sophie Lovell.

"They are turning accepted norms on their heads and confronting our preconceptions about design. Our survival depends upon change, and this is only possible through individuals that are able to think and act beyond social, theoretical and methodical norms.

Traditionally those who disengage in this way are outsiders – freaks – and traditionally they are suppressed or rejected since they tend to threaten the status quo.

But now the status quo is threatening us and we are learning to value and to celebrate “difference”."

Jerszy Seymour, for example, takes us back to the “primeval soup” of design, reconsidering materials and shapes with a new “alphabet and language” to examine how industry affects values and social structures.

Pieke Bergmans virally subverts mass-production processes, creating a new product world where mutations and irregularities are the norm, not the exception, and  French designer Mathieu Lehanneur explores the interfaces between the techno and biospheres to discover new functional potentials.

The Freak Show continues until January the 15th 2011 and there will also be a limited edition catalogue designed by Christiane Bördner from I Love You magazine available soon.