28 THE COLLECTOR SHINES

Art café “Kolekcionārs”
Blaumaņa Street 7

Inspired by Ralph Steiner’s 1930 documentary reel “Mechanical Principles”, the café “Kolekcionārs” (“The Collector”) as part of the light festival features an early 20th century-themed light installation. Both window-cases of the art café feature moving mechanical devices made of chrome-plated metal, that are illuminated by a static light source, thus creating deformed and dynamic lights and darks. The mechanical devices of the art object – with their levers, cogs and springs – were a symbol of technological and scientific progress in the 1930s. If back then the visual appearance of these mechanical objects was meant to preach progress, nowadays these objects operate but achieve nothing – that is, if we consider light and shadows nothing.

Author and implementer of the object: Art café “Kolekcionārs”