Heckert made the blades, mounting them on spring hinges so that Merrit "could pull a lever and they would spring into position." In another, equally Blade Runner customization, Heckert attached blades from a small hedge-trimmer to one side of Merrit's wheelchair and grafted a frame from an automatic pistol onto the other side. "He was very put off by people pushing his chair without asking him first, which frequently happened in public places such as airports," notes Heckert. "He wanted them to have to think about what they were doing."

Merrit's visit to Heckert's workshop turned into a one-stop shopping spree. He rounded out his order with the purchase of one of Heckert's hand-held flame-throwers. "Why would anyone want a hand-held flame-thrower?," wonders Heckert. "I only asked him to assure me he wouldn't maim anyone with it and that that wasn't his intention. He did end up using it on stage when performing with Kruppelschlag."

A wry critic of our born-again faith in technology, Merrit celebrated breakdowns and runaways, uselessness and obsolescence. In so doing, he held a lit match to the overblown gas-bag of cyberhype, reminding us that even machines fail, ail, and ultimately grow old and die. Even so, he was no nihilist: His was an iconoclasm with heart – a kinder, gentler irony, in the spirit of Bruno Munari's useless gadgets or Jean Tinguely's suicidal devices. A poet of the Rust-Belt Sublime, he made us see that dead machines and decaying steelworks are the perfumed ruins of our age.

He found his own uses for things.

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All Photos from Johannes Domisch for Just Merrit
Photomodified by Oates

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