1. ‘Transformers’ is the show’s title though these objects do not transform. The reference is not the science fiction movie. Transformers are not robots. Here, Transformers are subversive modules, catalysts. They don’t comply. They break with a solution or elegant answer. They go against the grain. Their material solutions are fixed, but viewing transforms them. What do they intend to do with your space? These typologies are social invaders. They fit but don’t fit. Mostly friendly extraterrestrials, they refuse to blend in and in addition, offer a mysterious service to your decor.
2. Transformers are declinations of two readymade, incredible materials: light and aluminum. The invention of Alufix set the standard for the car industry. They look like silver legos. Originally, placed alongside the production line of a car, they are built as precise measurement jigs for a car’s body panels, creating a negative around the positive of a new vehicle. These Transformers flip the Alufix’s function, the material becomes a main character. These Transformers act as jigs for the body panel of your life. Functionally, they seem to be black and white, anodized aluminum lamps and a table, markers of sleek design. In practice, they hold up the invisible relations of your social space. A frozen Tetris game blocks itself into an environment near you, giving the intangible atmosphere a shape, and an innuendo gains form.
3. Transformers have diamond spots. Lights, lights, lights bejewel the Alufix. The tiny, sourced, cylindrical mini-spots with optical lenses sit on a metal ball, held by a magnet. Designed to be concealable, their usual use is to light artefacts for museum vitrines worldwide. The spot can change its position, neatly. The grid of perforations on the Alufix offers a finite amount of possibilities to attach. Like sea barnacles, they seem to have mushroomed up. Fun fact, Barnacles tend to live in shallow, erosive settings.
4. As Transformers, they are taking back their power, going on strike to perform a reality check on your floor. Facing upwards and downwards, the lights expand multi-directionally on your life’s stage. The quantity of spots allows for a kind of lighting like in a theatre or a rock concert. More than you need, they pinpoint more than what is status-quo. Perhaps to speak their truth, ignite a spectacle. A brush of spots in all four directions makes them over- the-top, smooth drama queens. Divas to stir the pot articulated on these magnetic balls, so you can point or direct them in any direction. The personal is political, minute, and grand. But once placed, the set is rigged. Show time.
5. Transformers bring the site of change home (LS1, LS2). Life is an endless string of construction sites. Once in a while, you feel like you have perhaps built something. Grounded a living situation, started a relationship, found your dream job, made a plan, dug yourself a nice hole, reached an anchoring point, or manifested a cross in the road. There it hangs like a spectral sign on the highway, a lighted roadmap, the size of a chandelier in a medieval castle, made from chains and rough hooks, a crane would use to shift earth. A reminder, happiness is assembled.
6. Transformers are seismographs, anticipating the shifts in our times. Electricity and heating are expensive—no thanks to wars. Not here to Marie Kondo your life and ‘spark joy’, or organise your chaos with rainbow colors, they are here to activate an exchange. The screws are invisible and attached via a cold connection. LS4, in particular, is a flush connection. It is a profile, a beam of light, setting the bar for your horizon. Expand it. These autonomous and individual lights shine brighter if you put them into an environment of other things. They dare to take a stand among the standard furniture. In contrast with everything around them like a skyscraper in suburbia, a cactus among succulents, or a whistleblower at the company.
7. The Transformers next to a chair, could be an ambient lamp. This is not a ‘perfect’ reading lamp. This is an imposter—a socially critical light. The difference between lamps and lights is that lamps turn on and off, but lights shift your perspective. In your domestic environment focus on perhaps what is necessary: apologizing, calling out a family member’s political incorrectness like a misused pronoun, asking a difficult question, or offering words of affirmation. Let there be light for all.
8. The Transformers are on the ground floor. The gallery has no windows and used to be a nightclub. It is an exclusive space. The show is not an installation of furniture. Navigate the show like a real estate viewing, and decide without having lived here how the video game of your life might unfold. Imagine the use and the user, morphing. If you come in, look up, down, in, or out, you will see the light. Welcome.
Lights vs. Lamps An Edition of Modular Paragraphs, Nina Prader
