Transformer facilitates broad collaboration and responsiveness to the needs of artists, emerging curators, artist co-ops, collectives, and emerging arts initiatives through a variety of temporal projects to incubate developing and short-term projects that might not otherwise receive support.
Providing space, networks, financial investment and more to a growing list of artists and international collaborators, Transformer’s temporal projects embrace and foster nimbleness, fluidity, inventiveness, and collegiality in support of artistic experimentation.
Past Projects
THE NOMADIC HOUSE PROJECT [ACTS OF REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING]
JUNE 4 – 30, 2022
A collaboration between Transformer and The IceBox Collective.
The Nomadic House, as a symbol of home and shelter, evokes issues emerging around quarantine, climate crisis, conflict, and displacement. The concept of home, homelessness, transience - being rooted or unrooted - are increasingly threatened, as we watch the war in Ukraine unfold. The Nomadic House can manifest as a mobile shrine, a contemporary museum, a community space, a meditation space, a place for critical thought and healing dialogue.
Transformer is providing an activation site for The Nomadic House, collaborating on programming to catalyze dialogue and action to benefit the victims of the war, both in the immediate and in the aftermath when the conflict no longer occupies the headlines, supporting displaced communities and people trying to restart their lives.
HARDCORE: PAST/PRESENT/PUNK
SPRING/BREAK ART SHOW LA
February 16 – 20, 2022
Featuring photographs by Leslie Clague, Cynthia Connolly, and Farrah Skeiky
2020
THE ASBURY X TRANSFORMER
Victor Koroma
Spin Concept Series
October, 2020
Transformer is thrilled to grow our partnership with The Asbury Hotel in support of emerging visual artists. The presentation of Victor Koroma's Spin Concept Series builds upon The Asbury Hotel's support of Transformer's Siren Arts summer residency progam & performance art series, featuring an evolving & diverse roster of dynamic emerging visual artists based within the northeast corridor of Washington, DC to NYC.
Mapping the Future World:
A Sister Cities Project Presented by Transformer
August 17 - September 12, 2020
Transformer is thrilled to announce Mapping the Future World – a Sister Cities project supported by the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities. Connecting Korean and DC artists through a series of online conversations & digital communications, Mapping the Future World is building dialogue, connectedness, inspiration, insight and artwork to make sense of, and move forward in, this uncertain and unprecedented time.
Mapping the Future World is supported by a grant from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities’ Sister Cities International Art Grant.
SUMMER PROGRAM REPLAY
September 2 – 12, 2020
As we approach fall, Transformer takes a look back at our innovative summer 2020 programs through a special Summer 2020 Replay Showcase.
Tune in here from September 2 through September 12, to explore our summer 2020 series of artist exchanges, conversations, performances, new artworks, and collector views - all supporting emerging artists and engaging audiences in new & best practices in contemporary visual art.
Radical Plywood
July, 2020
As part of Transformer's mission to support artists, and in our continued efforts to be nimble and responsive to our DC community, we are honored to support Radical Plywood, an initiative of Radical Empathy, an events and activations startup created by DC resident Tarek Kouddous that targets underutilized and vacant spaces around the District. Radical Plywood is a direct response to DC businesses who boarded up their storefronts the first week of June amid protests against anti-black racism and police brutality. Seeking to fill the community with radical messages of hope and build awareness and voice for people aren't having their voices heard, Transformer collaborated with Logan Circle Main Street to provide artist honoraria for murals created throughout Transformer's Logan Circle neighborhood by artists: Leila Spolter, Timothy Cunningham, Musah Swallah, Ragda Noah, Francesca Lee Falvo, Zoe McCarthy, Dominique Homza, and Kelly Towles.
Catch us in this Washington City Paper article!
ARTISTS SUSTAINING ARTISTS FUND
June - July, 2020
Mindful of the unique hardships emerging artists – and in particular emerging Black Artists and Artists of Color – face as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Transformer is providing need-based, unrestricted relief grants of $500 to 20 emerging artists in DC experiencing financial hardship due to the pandemic.
—— APPLICATION CLOSED——
Deadline to Apply | Sunday, July 5 at 11:59pm EST
Practicing emerging visual artists living in the DC Metro Area (DC, Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Montgomery or Prince George’s counties) are eligible to apply. Applicants must be 21 or older and able to receive taxable income in the United States regardless of their citizenship status.
RELIEF GRANT FUNDS will be distributed to selected artists beginning July 13.
The applicant review committee includes Artists Sustaining Artists participating artist Zoë Charlton, Transformer Board Member Sheldon Scott, and Transformer Co-Founder & Executive/Artistic Director Victoria Reis.
Support for the relief grants come from Transformer's Artists Sustaining Artists Program. As Transformer Board & staff continue to grow support for this initiative, Transformer will be able to offer this funding to more artists.
Artists Sustaining Artists
June, 2020
Transformer is proud to present Artists Sustaining Artists, an initiative intended to provide financial support to emerging artists negatively impacted by COVID-19. This initiative is being led by Transformer Board and staff, with artworks curated by Transformer Board Members Christopher Addison of Addison/Ripley, artist Sheldon Scott, and Transformer’s Executive & Artistic Director Victoria Reis.
Selected artists who are sustained in their careers have been invited to donate an artwork that will be sold to support their emerging peer artists. All sale proceeds will support Transformer and the emerging artists the organization serves. 70% of sale proceeds will be distributed to emerging artists in the form of unrestricted microgrants and artist honorariums. The remaining 30% of sale proceeds will go toward supporting Transformer operations. This initiative will support the DC creative community. All participating artists generously donating artworks are DC-based, and funds will go towards supporting DC-based artists.
Artist On-Line Caravanserai
March 22 - May 30, 2020
Transformer’s Artist On-Line Caravanserai initiative expanded upon Which Yesterday is Tomorrow? concepts of gathering people for exchange of ideas. Transformer invited 11 artists to take over our Instagram story to visually share their insight, ideas and inspiration toward building connectivity.
Many thanks to Artist On-Line Caravanserai participating artists: Dahlia Elsayed & Andrew Demirjian, Andrea Polichetti, Alexis Gomez, Sheida Soleimani, Michelle Luong, Aristeidis Lappas, DJ Nikilad, Samera Paz, Helene Garcia, and Maps Glover.
Phone Call
March 30 - April 3, 2020
Phone Call brings together poets and artists in immediate response to the shutdowns surrounding COVID-19 in an effort to connect people during a time of isolation. Inspired, in-part, by the late John Giorno’s Dial-a-Poem, Yoko Ono’s Telephone Piece, and Nigel Shafran’s series Ruth on the phone, Phone Call aims to reconnect people within intimate space of a phone call on a 1-to-1 level. Participants can sign up to be read to and hold conversations with poets and artists over the phone.
Conceived by Ginevra Shay, Phone Call is part of the nomadic project Rose Arcade, and supported by Transformer. Through Phone Call, Transformer will be providing funding to more than 20 artists, and connection to more than 200 participants.
With your support, our goal is to grow this program, funding more artists and providing Phone Call more people in the community.
Transformer Presents: Rachel Schmidt’s Vanishing Points, Curated by Dawne Langford at SPRING/BREAK
SPRING/BREAK Art Show NYC 2020, In Excess
March 4-9, 2020 11am-8pm
Room 1136
625 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10022
Vanishing Points is a multimedia installation incorporating projected video and sculpture created with a mass of single-use consumer items which responds to this year's SPRING/BREAK curatorial theme, In Excess. The work embraces a baroque style established 450 years ago - noted also as the duration that it takes for plastic consumables to biodegrade. This aesthetic equates opulence with exalted divinity and culturally significant as a symbol of wealth and power, or the desire for it. This value system has permeated our daily lives as conspicuous consumption accelerates the certainty of our destruction. The installation further includes a soundscape composed by the musician and artist kev.om.era (Kevin O'Meara), creating a fully immersive experience.
Rachel Schmidt is interested in futuristic visions of a world without a natural ecosystem, where synthetic biology governs how people relate and coexist. Her work explores how a vanishing ecosystem will manifest itself in the awareness and scarcity of material use. She uses time-based media and installation to explore urbanization and its impact on ecosystems, future landscapes, and the role that myth plays in our understanding of the environment. Rachel received her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has exhibited throughout the US and internationally, and has been reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, Washington Post, and numerous other print and online publications. She is an installation artist based in Washington, DC.
2019
Transformer Co-Presents Hoesy Corona’s Climate Immigrants at Superfine! Art Fair
October, 2019
Climate Immigrants (2016-present) is a multimedia installation and performance by artist Hoesy Corona that considers the impending plight of climate-induced global migration and its effects on people of color. The performers wear “climate-ponchos,” which feature vinyl cutout silhouettes that display a long-distance exodus of displaced communities of people. The interactive objects are adorned with images that depict the archetypal “traveler,” the subjects are portrayed while in unilateral transition, wearing backpacks and hats, carrying suitcases and holding children. The viewer witnesses the silent movements of anonymous persons in context with sound and video which conceptualizes the nuanced experience of migrant travel that is initiated by climate change and environmental injustice.
Hoesy Corona (b. 1986 Guanajuato, Mexico) is an emerging and uncategorized queer Mexican artist living and working in the United States. His work is executed across various media while considering what it means to be a queer latinx immigrant in a place where there are few. His performances and installations oftentimes silently confront and delight viewers with some of the most pressing issues of our time. Reoccurring themes of queerness, race/class/gender, nature, isolation, and celebration are present throughout his work.
He lived in Mexico, Utah, and Wisconsin, before moving to Baltimore, MD in 2005 to establish a professional practice in the arts. He is a recent Halcyon Arts Lab Fellow 2017-2018 in Washington, DC and is a current George Kaiser Family Foundation Tulsa Artist Fellow in Tulsa, OK. He splits his time between Baltimore and Tulsa.
CAMP at The Line Hotel DC
2019
CAMP at the LINE is a rooftop event series from James Beard Award-winning Chef Spike Gjerde and Corey Polyoka of A Rake’s Progress. An escape from the city, CAMP takes inspiration from Summer and Fall travels with friends and family, downtime well spent over local food, local beers, and the LINE's panoramic rooftop view of Washington, DC. The bar will be cold, the snacks will be endless, and with morning, afternoon, and evening hours in full effect, CAMP at the LINE is something to write home about.
CAMP is held in support of a lineup of The LINE's favorite community and cultural organizations, with $5 per guest going towards their work and mission. Your CAMP dues cover this donation, as well as endless passed snacks during the event from the team behind A Rake’s Progress.
Hill Prince x Transformer
APRIL 10, 2019 - JUNE 12, 2019
Hill Prince
1337 H Street NE
Washington, DC 20002
Transformer is excited to partner with Hill Prince in presenting an exhibition of works curated from the Transformer FlatFile program, with additional works by emerging DC area artists. Join us the 2nd Wednesday of each month, April 10 - June 12, at Hill Prince for Transformer FlatFile Happy Hours to meet and mingle with Transformer artists, staff, and supporters. 10% of all bar sales will benefit Transformer!
Artists include: Eames Armstrong, Margaret Bakke, Amy Boone-McCreesh, Tacy Bradbury, Jessica Cebra, Artise Fletcher, David R. Ibata, Rose Jaffe, Christopher Kardambikis, Joseph Orzal, Ding Ren, MichaelAngelo Rodriguez, Johab Silva, Farrah Skeiky, Hannah Spector, & many more!
2018
UNSETTLED: An Afternoon of Performance Art
October 31 – November 4, 2018
Union Market’s Dock 5
Transformer is pleased to present UNSETTLED – a performance art series curated for "Superfine! The Fair by Victoria Reis, Founder and Director of Transformer. UNSETTLED features performances by a select group of leading DC based emerging artists – Hoesy Corona, Rex Delafkaran, Maps Glover, Kunj, and Tsedaye Makonnen – each of whom are pushing performance art forward with their innovative, interdisciplinary work.
Previously presented in Miami and New York, with upcoming manifestations in Los Angeles, "Superfine! The Fair – created in 2015 by James Miille, an artist, and Alex Mitow, an arts entrepreneur – makes its DC premiere October 31 to November 4, 2018, at Union Market’s Dock 5 event space, featuring 300 visual artists from DC and beyond who will present new contemporary artwork throughout 70+ curated booths. "Superfine! The Fair also features emerging collector events, tours, film screenings and panels. superfinedc.eventbrite.com
Always seeking new platforms to connect & promote DC-based emerging artists with their peers and supporters, and new opportunities to increase dialogue among audiences about innovative contemporary art practices, Transformer is excited to present UNSETTLED at "Superfine! The Fair UNSETTLED curator and Executive & Artistic Director of Transformer Victoria Reis states: “"Superfine! The Fair at Union Market’s Dock 5 presents an opportunity for Transformer to advance our partnership based mission, expand our network, and further engage with a growing new demographic of DC art collectors and contemporary art enthusiasts. UNSETTLED highlights a select group of dynamic, DC-based emerging artists at the forefront of quickly evolving performance art practice, who are representative of the vibrant creative energy Transformer works to cultivate throughout our exhibitions and programs.”
Crochet Jam with Ramekon O’Arwisters
Summer 2018
Farragut Square Park
17th & K Street NW, Washington, DC
Transformer is honored to present Crochet Jam – a social practice art initiative created by San Francisco, CA-based fiber & textile artist Ramekon O’Arwisters in 2012, to engage audiences in the role of art within the community and the power of art within society. A public, art-making event that's embracing and inclusive, with no attempt made to dictate the creative process nor judge the finished project – Crochet Jam is a meditative, liberating, and empowering participatory experience.
Crochet Jam is rooted in artist Ramekon O’Arwisters’ cherished childhood memory steeped in the African-American tradition of weaving, in a calm and non-judgmental environment without rules or limitations: “When I was growing up in North Carolina, I helped my paternal grandmother, Celia Jones Taylor (1896–1982) make quilts. Quilt-making with her is one of my fondest childhood memories. With her, I was embraced, important, and special. I was a little black boy hiding my queer self from my family during the harsh reality of the Jim Crow South during the 1960s, and before the turbulent years of the Civil Rights Movement that spread throughout the country.” – Ramekon O’Arwisters. Ramekon decided to start a community art project that enables groups of people to collectively work on a piece of art with a focus on relaxation and human connection, done in public with strangers.
Platforms Project | Independent Art Fair, Athens Greece
MAY 2018
Athens, Greece
Transformer is proud to feature artists Hoesy Corona, Rex Delafkaran, & Kunj at the 2018 Platforms Project: Independent Art Fair in Athens, Greece! Presenting 2D, 3D and performative works from each of the three artists in booth #28 during the weekend of May 18-20, 2018.
Through the support of the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities Sister Cities grant award, Transformer expands upon our comprehensive international artistic & cultural exchange programming to achieve creative and professional growth experience for the participating DC artists to advance their artistic careers and expand their international contemporary art audiences.
Through the development of relationships with artists and art spaces in Athens, Greece, as well as developing relationships with internationally based peer artists, art spaces, and galleries participating in Platforms Project, Transformer is proud to provide these DC artists access to an understanding of new and best practices within the global contemporary visual arts field, while developing relationships that will propel them in their artistic careers.
2017
Shadow/Casters
JUNE 10, 2017
Hishoorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will partner with local arts organization Transformer to present Shadow/Casters, an after-hours performance art event on the Hirshhorn’s outdoor plaza Saturday, June 10, 7:30–11 p.m. Guests will be invited to explore the museum during special extended hours, enjoy a cash bar and music on the plaza, and take in four site-specific performances that creatively explore abundance, transition, and community through contemporary storytelling and ritual.
Coinciding with Transformer’s 15th anniversary and the approaching summer solstice, Shadow/Casters features one-night-only performances by Washington-based artists Jason Barnes (Pussy Noir), Alexandra ‘Rex’ Delafkaran, Kunj and Hoesy Corona. Music by Ebony Dumas aka DJ Natty Boom, with drumming by Devin Ocampo (the EFFECTS, Warm Sun) and Jerry Busher (Fugazi, French Toast).
COLUMBIA DIMINUENDO
A New Work In 12 parts By The Holladay Brothers
2017
On the last Sunday of every month in 2017, a string quartet will convene in the shadow of the Capitol building to perform a new work by The Holladay Brothers entitled Columbia Diminuendo.
The composition is a re-imagining of the piece ‘Hail, Columbia’, first performed at the inauguration of George Washington in 1789 and which served as the unofficial national anthem for years after. For each of its 12 renditions, the performers will be given revised sheet music containing fewer and fewer notes. Throughout the course of the year, the song will become increasingly abstract as the clarity of the original melodies begin to recede, eventually beyond recognition and finally, to silence.
2014
2013
MAY 4, 2013
Black Whiskey
Advancing our partnership-based mission to connect and promote emerging artists, Transformer is pleased to announce a special collaboration with our new Logan Circle neighbor Black Whiskey, a restaurant and mixed-use art space by chef-owner Darren Norris of Kushi Izakaya & Sushi Restaurant.
As part of Black Whiskey’s grand opening, Transformer presents Cult Fiction, a large-scale mixed media installation by artists Cheyenne Seeley and Zach Storm. Combining Seeley and Storm’s harmonizing visual aesthetics, this expressive wall painting will feature colorful drawings, paintings, and collage both directly on the wall at Black Whiskey, as well as on works displayed on top of what is created on the wall. “Cult Fiction is an exercise in open-ended narrative,” say the artists, “The layering of imagery is meant to inspire a narrative relationship between images. The implied relationships can be read from any direction similar to graphic novel panels.” Seeley and Storm will attempt to pair down their work to an elemental visual language in order to create relationships that don't come with excess baggage. In acknowledgement of the difficulty and potential impossibility of this task, the artists use recognizable imagery as well as recognizable artistic techniques as a way of pushing the viewer along in whichever interpretation they choose.
Following the launch of Cult Fiction 7-9pm on May 4, the celebration at Black Whiskey will continue 9pm – 2am, $10/person, with more great music by our friends: DJ Kid Congo Powers (founder of Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave and the Badseeds, the Pink Monkey Birds), DJ Ian Svenonius/ Name Names (The Make Up, Weird War, Nation of Ulysses; Author of Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock ‘n’ Roll Group & The Psychic Soviet), and a special performance by Deathfix – featuring Brendan Canty (Fugazi), Rich Morel (formerly of Bob Mould’s band), Devin Ocampo and Mark Cisneros of Medications & The Make Up, this hometown heavyhitting supergroup makes woozy psychedelic jams - and Paint Brush!
Cult Fiction
2012
1x1 by Office of Experiments at Transformer
March 20 – July 1, 2012 at numerous sites and event based performances in the Federal District and surrounding areas in the former Union state of Maryland and former Confederate state of Virginia.
With this project, Office of Experiments are creating a distributed artwork in which 1000 vials of symbolic tears, collected water from Japan, will be used to water some of the 3000 Cherry Trees donated to Washington, DC by Tokyo 100 years ago. A temporary lab at Transformer on P Street will display the 1000 vials, which will then be distributed by volunteers. Mapped and documented online, the distribution of these vials address both the intimacy and scale of this disaster that transgresses the territories of society and culture. Further information and limited edition prints will also be available at Transformer.
A relational art piece and emotional catalyst connecting visitors with tsunami victims. Office of Experiments' temporary lab space at Transformer acts as a center of activity: offering prints to visitors in exchange for a donation to tsunami charities and displaying 1000 vials - symbolic tears collected from Japan. Volunteers will pour drops from vials, numbered and trackable online, as offerings of remembrance onto cherry blossom trees across the city. Further performative interventions at federal and global media sites throughout DC will be announced at www.the1x1project.com
More about the Project: https://officeofexperiments.net/on-experiment/1x1project/ & https://nealwhite.org/1-x1-Project
Curator: Steve Rowell
Images: Neal White / The Office of Experiments
2011
(e)merge Art Fair
SEPTEMBER 23, 2011 - SEPTEMBER 25, 2011
For Transformer's participation in (e)merge, a new art fair designed to "celebrate galleries, artists, artists' work and the creative process, and to create an energetic environment of collaboration and discovery," we will present new works by DC based artists Erin Boland, Jessica Cebra and Emilia Olsen in a site-specific, hotel bedroom installation.
Each of these artists brings a unique approach to their medium. Boland's drawings and sculptures investigate the dissonance that allows us to explore our anatomies without the physical experience of looking at a dissected human body. Similarly, Cebra's photographic collages disassemble and reassemble glamour shots of women from high-end fashion magazines exploring the aesthetics of decadence and opulence. Olsen's mixed media works on paper revolve around the emotions that girls and women face as they grow out of adolescence and experience flaws, pain, love, sexuality and disappointment.
2010
Transformer's Response to Censorship of David Wojnarowicz's "Fire in My Belly"
DECEMBER 1, 2010
Transformer was the first organization to present "A Fire in My Belly" in a direct and immediate response to the Smithsonian's censorship of a 4-minute edited version pulled from the Hide/Seek exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.
Screened on a continual loop in Transformer's store-front window space on Dec. 1-2, 2010, and in honor of World AIDS Day & Day With(out) Art, Transformer is proud to have initiated early further dialogue around this work and its censoring.
In addition to the initial screening of A Fire in My Belly, Transformer continued its efforts to promote dialogue around these events.
hide/SPEAK Panel Discussion at the DCJCC
The first screening of Fire in My Belly in reaction to the removal of the video from the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) took place at Transformer in Washington, DC, followed by an artistic action protest Transformer organized with artists in the community. Additionally, Transformer and the Washington DC Jewish Community Center (DCJCC) presented hide/SPEAK, in collaboration with writer & activist Catherine V. Dawson, a conversation with Hide/Seek co-curator David C. Ward to discuss the events that lead up to the Smithsonian’s removal of the video from the exhibition, the events that have unfolded since the video was pulled, the social and political implications of the situation, and how we as a community – in all definitions and configurations of “community” – view this particular moment.
DEATH PANEL PERFORMANCE
MY BARBARIAN
APRIL 24, 2010
Transformer
Performance will begin promptly at 8pm,
Run time: approximately 30 – 45 minutes
*Audience members are welcome to view the performance from either inside or outside Transformer’s project space.
Death Panel Discussion is a performance that uses the trope of the mythic "death panel" to exhume a curatorial panel discussion. Playing three "nightmare curators", the members of My Barbarian discuss fictional contemporary art episodes that reflect that world's political dilemmas. An impolitic outburst transforms the curators into pro-socialist witch doctors, who sing a number dedicated to leftist health-care policies. Death Panel Discussion is a part of the group's video project, The Night Epi$ode (2009), which conflates old horror television with scary national political anxieties. The Night Epi$ode was presented in 2009 at Participant Inc. in New York, and will be exhibited in fall 2010 at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
My Barbarian is a Los Angeles-based performance collective founded in 2000 by Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade. The trio performs in site-specific plays, musical concerts, theatrical situations and produces video installations that play with the spectacular while engaging viewers critically. Their interdisciplinary projects explore and exhume cross-cultural mishaps and misadventures drawn from history, mythology, art and popular culture.
My Barbarian has performed and exhibited widely in Los Angeles: LACMA, REDCAT, Hammer Museum, MOCA, LAXART, Schindler House, LACE; in New York: Whitney Museum, New Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, Participant, Inc., Joe's Pub; and elsewhere at Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Aspen Art Museum; Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; Samson Projects, Boston; The Power Plant, Toronto; De Appel, Amsterdam; Peres Projects, Berlin; Torpedo, Oslo; El Matadero, Madrid and Galleria Civica, Trento, Italy; Lui Velazquez, Tijuana. My Barbarian was included in the 2005 and 2007 Performa Biennials, the 2006 and 2008 California Biennials and the 2007 Montreal Biennial. In 2008, the group performed commissioned works for the New Museum and Galleria Civica, Trento. They also presented an durational performance installation at Art Positions, Art Basel Miami Beach. In 2008, My Barbarian recieved an Art Matters grant to make a new performance and video project at the Townhouse Gallery, in Cairo, Egypt. They will have their first solo exhibition at a commercial gallery in May 2009, at Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles. www.mybarbarian.com
2008
Bartering in the Land of Abundance
AUGUST 26, 2008 - AUGUST 28, 2008
The Floating Lab Collective set up a series of objects within Transformer’s project space, encouraging visitors to take an object in exchange for an object they leave behind.
To document and archive the exchanges, a Floating Lab Collective artist on site made quick drawings of each item and recorded its known history. Floating Lab Collective said: “The purpose of bartering in this instance is to subvert both its semantic value and the traditional context of the art object as mercantile in nature. This project places the object in a social interstice, basically removed from the law of profit by emphasizing the sociability of the object in the context of bartering.”
Moment of Zen: Meeting Buddha in the Road
AUGUST 08, 2008 - AUGUST 26, 2008
From August 8-26, 2008, John James Anderson's video work Moment of Zen: Meeting Buddha in the Road was featured in Transformer's storefront window. "In the video the protagonist focuses on his concept of nothingness – television static – and believes himself enlightened" says Anderson, " -- before realizing that the television and his concept is nothing more than a false Buddha." For more information about John James Anderson and to purchase DVDs of Moment of Zen: Meeting Buddha in the Road, please contact the artist directly at: johnjamesanderson@gmail.com
2007
The Grate Project
SEPTEMBER 15, 2007 - SEPTEMBER 30, 2007
Seeking to create large scale paintings that will exist in the public realm, from September 15 through September 30, 2007 Kelly Towles created murals that completely covered the roll-down security grates at One World Fitness, outside the artist studios at 926 N Street in Blagden Alley, and at the Black Cat nightclub. Re-vitalizing these grates into dynamic contemporary artworks, The Grate Project is intended to further dialogue about the nature of street art and public art work, while enhancing DC's street-scapes.
The Grate Project was made possible through the support of the Creative Communities Fund - The Community Foundation of the National Capital Region, Transformer, One World Fitness, The Black Cat, and Furioso Development Corporation. Special thanks to Giorgio Furioso, Dante Ferrando, and Karim Steward for making The Grate Project possible.
Chance
SEPTEMBER 07, 2007 - SEPTEMBER 29, 2007
Chance is the latest project by Jane Jerardi - a new video-dance series and public art project that considers the luck of being in the ‘right place at the right time.' Focusing on everyday coincidences that go mostly unnoticed, but create beautiful relationships between diverse people, these eerie and beautiful dance videos will appear projected on the outside of buildings in downtown DC throughout the month of September. The idea of chance will permeate the way it is presented, with audiences happening upon the projected videos by chance, bringing startling and beautiful art to everyday places.
Chance originated with a residency about dance improvisation and video at the School for Arts in Learning, a public charter school in DC, with a small group of 5th and 6th graders. Following this, Jane developed a set of video shorts—filming in unlikely locations including an old ballroom and city park benches with Brian Buck and Ginger Wagg.
Direction - Jane Jerardi; Videography - Fernando Ortega, Michael Wichita; Performance - Brian Buck, Jane Jerardi, Ginger Wagg.
Visit chancedance.org for more information.
Sharon Cheslow & James Schneider
AUGUST 11, 2007
On Saturday, August 11 2007, Transformer presented a one-night-only performance by Sharon Cheslow and James Schneider. Cheslow and Schneider (aka Matterlink), who both emerged from DC's 1980's punk scene, fused their improvised sound and image work to create a "sonic image" performance. Appropriately, as they foud themselves in their native town at the same time, they confronted themes of "home" and "homeland."
Sharon Cheslow is a musician/sound artist who uses guitar, electronics, objects and voice in songs, improvised noise and collages. She leads the collaborative group Coterie Exchange and has performed with Steve Kim (Silver Daggers), Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers), Christina Carter (Charalimbides) and Yellow Swans. UK label Curor will be releasing her trio with Liz Allbee and Weasel Walter in 2007. Recent works were at Switch on the Power! (Spain), Lincoln Center Out of Doors (NYC) and Telic Arts Exchange (LA). Based in San Francisco, she currently lives in LA.
sharoncheslow.com | myspace.com/sharoncheslow
Matterlink (aka James Schneider), vampler, performs a "live cinema", playing shots both found and filmed by the artist and re-sampling them (always with the original sound attached). He has been vampling since 2001, triggering these "affect pockets" which he transforms into raw, content-driven sound/image-scapes. In 1998, Schneider moved from his native Washington DC to Paris where he has been vampling since the year 2001, in collaborations and solo. He recently completed the science fiction feature length tone poem 1,2,3, Whiteout, starring cult actor Lou Castel, which premiered at this year's Rotterdam Film Festival.
vampler.net/matterlink | jamesjune.info/matterlink
2003
192 Hours
APRIL19, 2003 - APRIL 26, 2003
In collaboration with DC Hope Collective with artists Bonnie Crawford, Partrick Young, Chuck Sehman, Ben Tolman, Kelly Towles, and Virginia Arrisueno.
2002
Dialogue 02: Dia de los Muertos
November 8, 2002
Dialogue is a seasonal art action created by Ingrid Hagerstrom, artist-in-residence at Transformer. Combining conceptual and sculptural art elements, Dialogue reflects Hagerstrom's artistic processes as both artist and chef. Hagerstrom places everyday objects such as a table and chairs (that are either made or chosen) into the gallery setting. Placed with specific intent, these objects take on heightened meaning. Dialogue attempts to strip down preconceived notions of art, creating both the context and forum for the art idea to reveal itself.
Developed in collaboration with installation artist Beatrice Valdes Paz, Dialogue 02: Dia de los Muertos highlights traditions of coming together for reflection and celebration of the cycles of life.
Dia de los Muertos is an event to remember ancestors whose spirits visit the earth once a year. Considered a passage from one type of living to another, this concept of the cycle or circle of life is a strong tradition with many native and indigenous peoples worldwide. Fused with Catholicism's All Souls Day on Nov. 2 and All Saints Day on Nov. 1 to become Day (or Days) of the Dead, the dead are honored by transforming entire rooms into altars with offerings such as photographs, toys, incense, flowers, favorite music and favorite foods of those who have passed. Creating site specific altar installations throughout the gallery space, including public offering altars in Transformer’s front window and back alcove that guests are encouraged to add items to, and a central food altar with hot chocolate, specialty pastries and treats, Hagerstrom and Valdes Paz explore Day of the Dead traditions honoring those who have died while commenting on recent social and cultural losses.
MEDIA
Dialogue 01: Thinking is Form
July 20, 2002
8pm at Transformer
Dialogue is a seasonal art action created by Ingrid Hagerstrom, artist-in-residence at Transformer. Combining conceptual and sculptural art elements, Dialogue reflects Hagerstrom's artistic processes as both artist and chef. Hagerstrom places everyday objects such as a table and chairs (that are either made or chosen) into the gallery setting. Placed with specific intent, these objects take on heightened meaning. Dialogue attempts to strip down preconceived notions of art, creating both the context and forum for the art idea to reveal itself.
Transformer Radio
Established 2018 with Full Service Radio
(e)merge art fair
October 02 – 05, 2014
