The Abductionist’s House

The Abductionist’s House, pencil, pastel on tone paper, 29,7 x 21 cm

Pink, magenta, purple, are the colors most likely to excite consumer interest. Colors of this family have the right temperature, are inviting, and compelling. While this fact was discovered by the comics industry in the 1950’s, it took very long to become common knowledge among mass manipulators. Certain snap judgments stood in the way. As to content, most notable elements besides this house (designed by a real yet long dead architect, not by the author) are the two dogs in the foreground, representing the two owners of this house (a hunter couple), and the unique pyramidic tree sculpture to the left. This is going to be patented and mass produced and sold cheaply to those who prefer a touch of class and artificiality in and on their gardens and lawns. Also, these can be illuminated from withing to become glowing tree shapes in the night. People will say: “Nice touch, we like!”. The house owners seem to be active and in attendance inside their lodge, see the smoke coming from the chimney, a prop element hinting at occupation.

Fore a change of viewing, go here.

Rendering © 2027 by Torsten Slama

The Constitutionalist

The Constitutionalist, 40 x 29,9 cm, pencil, colored pencil on paper

The Constitutionalist, so-called to uphold the value of a carefully set down list of fundamental values and principles according to which a state is to be run or governed, is seen parking in front of a railway station called “Rheinburg”, symbolically so, as the river Rhine is the traditional geographical border between western civilization and the teutonic netherworld, unconstitutional “Hel”. Serving as a permanent control to the permanent control value of the constitution, a floating device in the shape of a futuristic world-lantern, casting its unreal and otherworldly light on the phallic orange body of The Constitutionalist. Ideas of heliocentrism, constitutionalism, anti-dyslexia, state controlled eductation and indoctrination, etc. are all the outgrowth of a patriarchal tradition, the eternal fight against gynaecocracy.

Dyslexia, a silent deviant, an underminer of understanding
Makes values crumble
The book worlds tumble
More proud than humble, as it is powerful

And knows its power well. But not from books.
It’s eminently practical, pragmatic, 
But also deceiving.

Know your enemy well, the cunning one
Who does not work with strategy,
Whose moves are based on instincts.

Honing in on the weakness of well-read intellectuals
Spineless thinkers who sold out to the written word

Rendering © 2027 by Torsten Slama, “March Against Dyslexia”, poem by Torsten Slama

The Plutonian

The Plutonian, pencil, coloured pencil, leaf silver, 39 x 29,7 cm

A compact, strong shunting engine well suited to deal with the adversities of everyday life and hard work. The Plutonian world is the opposite of the cool world. You need to be clad in special alloys and have a powerful yet simple method of propulsion in order to survive the first few meters on your way through life. It seems best not to dwell on further associative stream-of-consciousness writing, but to complement this drawing with a poem:

I did it while suffering
I did it while suffering
Medical complications

I did it while
Facing life
From the perspective of death
Surviving death
Every day

Some elementary truths
I picked up
Along the way
Littered on the wayside
Picked truths like flowers
Some hidden truths
Suppressed truths
I did it while suffering

While suffering
I did things
I lifted things
I saw through things
Elementary things
From the perspective of death
I did it.

So you, who see things
From the perspective of life
All pink, rose tinted
Don’t you dare
To criticize
Or nit-pick
What I did
Because I did it
While suffering.

Rendering © 2027 by Torsten Slama and the Shunting Society, “I did it While Suffering”, poem by Torsten Slama

The Carl Grossberg (The Rift)

The Carl Grossberg, 48 x 36,5 cm, mixed media on yellow tone paper

A detailed, if slightly crammed drawing with the theme of what our world would and could have looked like if energy independence, chemical independence, transportation independence and true man-nature metabolism had been the goal of industrialization. The drawing could also be an illustration to a treatise on “The Rift” (in the universal metabolism of nature), as described by Karl Marx. Not that the artist is deeply informed on the subject. In fact, any assumption of true literacy in any genre is categorically refuted (in accordance with the law of humbleness and common sense). Embedded in the rocky landscape background are several stylized coal liquefaction plants or chemical factories, tubes and pipelines, and one motif from a painting by Carl Grossberg (Fabriklandschaft im Schnee, 1923). Of course there is no snow here, as in fact the yellow color of the cardboard on which the scene was drawn evokes impressions of a slightly murky,  warm climate (perhaps of the inner earth) with sunlight filtering through a crack in the rocky ceiling, further muted by an emission-saturated atmosphere.  The drawing consists of several layers of pencil, colored pencil, washes of acrylics and different reflective and metallic pigments on a base of human spittle (which are in fact all but invisible.  Note that the “inner earth / Hollow Earth” theme has all sorts of connotations, historical science fiction ones as well as the psychoanalytical/gynacocratic/chthonic idea of earth as a womb. It seems in any case appropriate to annex a quote by Bernard Herrmann, wherein he describes his ideas about scoring the Filme “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1959), since that film features landscapes not unlike the one depicted above: “I decided to evoke the mood and feeling of inner Earth by using only instruments played in low registers. Eliminating all strings, I utilized an orchestra of woodwinds and brass, with a large percussion section and many harps. But the truly unique feature of this score is the inclusion of five organs, one large Cathedral and four electronic. These organs were used in many adroit ways to suggest ascent and descent, as well as the mystery of Atlantis.” Drawing and words (except for italicized words by Bernard Herrmann) by Torsten Slama>

The Kraftick Liquefaction Plant

The Kraftick Liquefaction Plant, 36 x 50 cm, pencil, colored pencil on tone paper

“When Germany still strived for complete autonomy and independence of Western (and Eastern…ed.) influences, coal hydration technology was one of her attempts to realise complete energy independence. Had the hydration plants not been completely eradicated by the end of World War II, their gasoline output would have served Germany’s entire private car fleet well into the 1960’s. ”  National Empowerment through Petrolum (NETP)

Apart from all its pertinence to energy empowerment stratagems, this drawing should be judged on its artistic merits and technical peculiarities. Mixed media technique on tone paper makes for interesting depth effects. The pervading pink motor oil atmosphere is sometimes fought back, at times heightened. Some of the liquefaction towers are aslant. The geological rock formation on which the plant rests seems unstable. Even the thick concrete platform on which all rests cannot prevent warping. Yet maybe the warping is only in the eyes and the hands of the draftsperson. Or perceived aslantness could be an optical illusion due to the diagonal dynamics of the rock-layered landscape in the background, which works against the perpendicularness of the liquefaction towers.

In a special effort to facilitate appreciation of technique, two details are included:

   
Future © of this motor oil colorized drawing by Torsten Slama,the Energy Independence Society, and the NEPT yet undisclosed

The Jansenist Engine

The Jansenist Engine*, 39 x 29,7 cm, pencil, coloured pencil on paper, 2017

This reproduction perhaps does not do full justice to the original drawing, which has a rather unusual tonality, based on the blending of so many different brands, types, and colors of the colored pencil variety, all superimposed on an already well-finished pencil drawing with rather profound dynamics in the darkness-lightness range. Thus, the result is very much like a colorized black and white drawing, giving maybe the impression of a very early experiment in colour reproduction. The thematic dedication is referring to a Catholic theologian movement which enjoyed its phase of greatest vivacity from ca. 1660 to 1700 AD. Even though the movement played itself out predominantly in France, it was based on the teachings of a Danish theologian, emphasizing, in typical Nordic fashion, original sin and human depravity. The ?-voiced Commentator “ex”plains: this engine is a very impervious juggernaut, clad in different metallic alloys, being, say, indiscernible to radar, impenetrable by all sorts of electromagnetic radiation, shielded towards the degrading effects of human depravity and all varieties of human frailty. Any kind of believe in a superior being is something like a mental armour, shielding one from the hopelessness of mortality – the machine is a materialization of the urgent desire to overcome death. People often choose suicide to overcome death. They resent their mortal bodies. They would like to have their unique minds stored in metal cylinders — so, in a very roundabout fashion (or in a very allegorical fashion, or maybe in a very freely associative fashion), this drawing could also be called “The Whisperer in Darkness”.

The engine depicted here thus might be the metallic encasing for a human soul, moving through an archetypal, pagan, or, perhaps, Stygian highland (the Gaelic haven to the Teutonic type, disappointed with their own version of  a heathenist anti-western world), along some loch, or firth, or estuary, a landscape which might have formed the background to the most impressive feats of early Catholic Christianization, or Westernization.

*On a different and technically more feasible note, the metal cylinder integrated and made ambulatory in the Jansenist engine could also serve as a container for dead bodies (perhaps forever harbouring their souls, even after death), similar to the completely hermetic wood, metal, and wax coffin prescribed for the burial rites in Hans Henny Jahnn’s Church of Ugrino. As Jahnn, author of the deeply hermetic and religious novella “Das Holzschiff”, was himself buried in such a coffin (to prevent his holy body from rotting) it also becomes clear that the Jansenist link was solely associative, because the Jahnnist motif was still hidden in the background. Both spiritual positions describe that which was not embraced by the Catholic Church. Future © of this nostalgia-colorized drawing by Torsten Slama and the Society of Clovis yet undisclosed

The Unexamined Brutality

The Unexamined Brutality (of the male Libido), 70 x 50 cm, Oil on Canvas

This painting seems to hark back to times when the male libido was seemingly more unabashed and comparative innocence (or unabashed guilt) reigned the abusive intercourse between the sexes. The aesthetics are reminiscent of surrealist inspired propaganda imagery. Phallic forms abound. One sea shell stands, or lies, in lieu of the womb. One could argue that the central phallic form of the outer shell of the engine’s boiler is actually esemplastic in not only being the threatening phallus, but also the tubular receptacle hollowness, awaiting the phallic thrust of another longish form entering (see the old chuckle arousing locomotive/tunnel imagery). The ?-voiced Commentator “ex”plains: seeming nostalgia for simpler times does not thinly veil, but starkly outline the fact that we today live in the age where all old violence and abuse bears fruit. The true objectification of the woman takes place in the immediate future which is our presence. Groping will soon be replaced by more sophisticated (and cowardly) methods of abuse. Think about artificial intelligence being furnished with female faces, names, voices. Some are discussing whether these undead freaks should be taught to give more assertive responses to weather queries mixed with risqué innuendo and sexual abuse. Few discuss who decided that “virtual” assistants need female voices and whether it is not a very small step for the brutality of the male libido to then confuse the (universal) assistance offered with the liberties allowed by sex-slavedom.

Observe the more hopeful aspect of the depicted scenery, embodied by a disinterested spectator, a floating space vehicle in the rose tinted sky, watching the travesty on the ground with detached amusement. Maybe the dream of space insemination is not so very unbrutal. The shape and form of the device and its detachment, however, might be. The utopia offered by space.
Future © of this nostalgia-tinted painting by Torsten Slama and the Instrumentality of the Model Railroading Board

The Dedicated Engine

The Dedicated Engine (The Jane G. Goldberg)
Pencil, couloured pencil, gold leaf, 36.5x48cm

Thrusting, trusting, elongated, phallic, dedicated, this engine seems to go somewhere. Yet the composition is static. The engine was copied from one originally painted on glass, perhaps for a magic lantern, which originally bore the name “Little England” on its golden nameplate. The artist decided rather whimsically, truly quite in earnest (though jesting, maybe as a means for self-protection), to change the dedication to “Jane G. Goldberg”, after watching all available sessions of her televised group therapy show on a well known, cheap, as in free (or ad-financed), resource for online videos. Jane G. Goldberg, apart from being a real analyst of the Freudian school, also has a holistic day spa called La Casa Spa and Wellness Center, where amongst other things, one can get one’s colon cleansed, have other things done, and emerge hopefully rather cancer-free, fit for the future allotted to one. Dedications are something questionable, especially unsolicited ones. The author would profess shyness and insecurity about own worthiness as reasons for not seeking such authorisation. The background to the proud engine: a hydrogenation plant for coal liquefaction, either Bergius or Fischer-Tropsch style, ironically rendering coal, which makes the dedicated engine run, into petroleum, to make cars go. Thus the path into the future is opened. A future which now belongs to the past, even though the way to go, electric propulsion, is of course mostly a sham, a magic trick to evade the problem of nuclear fusion or some such groundbreaking thing. The whole further background is a landscape in the Chinese style, with two buildings of unknown purpose, fog, rock, and firs. The entire work forms a kind of stump or rump for a whole holistic world view, such as art should strive for. Stress release (and build up),  homogenisation, liquefaction, bowel maintenance, mental control, control functioning, anger management, again liquefaction, energy management, etc. are all the core techniques which ideally should join to form a true society for all, a universe for worthwhile existence, not only in life, but also in death or near-inertness (or extremely slowed down or procrastinated reactiveness), as is the life of a tree, and then, at the furthest end, a rock.
Future © of this atmospheric rendering by Torsten Slama and the Group Therapy Board

The Liverpool

The Liverpool (after Cuthbert Hamilton Ellis)
Pencil, Coloured Pencil, 40×29.7cm

This drawing’s slogan:  “The good old times weren’t good, just old”.  Someone said that and it is not at all clear what they meant. It seems to be something you say when you want to be philosophical, maybe nearing the end of your own time. The steam locomotive stands for old values, which are not good, just old. In truth most friends of steam believe yes, the values are good, not old. The steam engine also is something which enthusiasts describe as an object evoking ecstatic feelings of awe when first beheld. It hisses, has pressure, is a promise of good and functional sexuality. The image of the steam engine says more in the realm of culture, symbolism, and pictorialism then in terms of the actual object depicted. It says something about the owner or the creator of the image. Or rather, it used to say something. Today all is possible, or nothing. Please note the unpainted or stripped totem pole which does look slightly cock-eyed, a phallic symbol introducing the element of anachronism and dislocation. The flying object is perceived by some as a pill of  the capsule type, it is rather an oblong paraphrase of something spherical, a type of artistic quote. UFO enthusiasts know the artist referenced. Mostly everybody else also. An anagram: GREATER MIENT.  The creator of the totem in the foreground is an anonymous North American Indian. Or rather, this totem is actually a faux totem, as it has different parts from different totems, rearranged, and an atypical base construction. It is possibly hollow and made from acrylics. The creator (engineer) of the Engine is unknown to the author of this drawing, but surely known to the creator of the original painting this drawing pays homage to. That painter is Cuthbert Hamilton Ellis, who usually knew a lot about the engines he painted, as he was seeing his paintings really as substitutes for colour photographs in his learned books specializing on Edwardian railway lore.
Rendering © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the International Steam Traction Board “The good old times were not good, just old”

The Engine of Confidence

The Confident Engine (after W.W. “Bill” Stewart). pencil, coloured pencil, acrylics, 40×29.7cm

This drawing is based on a painting by the late New Zealand railway painter W.W. Stewart. The New Zealand railway station  and the engine was transplanted into a landscape of possibly Triassic character and the people decorating the scenery were eliminated. More specific information about the engine and the railway line could be obtained by a knowledgeable New Zealand railway buff. This artist, in full possession of his artistic prerogative to be weak-suited in terms of research, failed to do so. The copycat artist, having confidence issues, wants to strengthen the impact or poignancy of his drawing by adding the following impromptu piece of poetry (please observe the judicially placed punctuation; a mark of poetry):

Go, Engine of Confidence,
Go your way.
Unencumbered by self-doubt
Say it loud!
You have no capacity for self-doubt.

You are long in the tooth,
wide in the hip
You go on every trip
With confidence.

Engineered to do your best
Not concerned with all the rest
Your path might be crooked
Perspective unsound
Your wheels go round and round
Until you stop.

You are the horse of steel,
A projectile
In fashionable livery
That is your way
Oh could I be
Like you.  Atmospheric rendering © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the International Steam Traction Board

The Very Potent Hair-Tonic

Das sehr wirkungsvolle Haarelixier (A4, 2015)

(What follows is perhaps somewhat rambling while striving to be an encompassing description of what is already there, yet undescribed, and maybe even better left alone and unmolested by words and hearsay-facts. Uncovered, named, listed, documented sources often form a thicket under which lies buried the depth of original conception, and the factual ambiguity of the term “original”. A term which to discuss is not the purpose of the following word-thicket.)

This drawing was made to serve as a decorative side-piece for a show in a special sort of gallery, showcasing original editions of books by Bruno Schulz. The drawing’s author (the “artist”), limited in his choices by the restrictions describing his own realm of inclinations, would not have chosen this author to draw inspiration from, yet found in himself a strong urge to do “something different” (something different, of course, from what he would naturally do). So it was an appealing idea to do something according to somebody else’s wishes. So it had to be a sort of illustration. It was not to be a paraphrase of Bruno Schulz’s own, often somewhat fetish-centric drawings. It is an illustration of a detail in the short story, “The Book”, an ad for a hair tonic mentioned therein. Some pictorial inspiration was drawn from one of this drawing’s author’s favourite oil paintings, “Mourning Picture”, by Edwin Romanzo Elmer. Since the drawing’s author does not get around too much, he has never seen that painting in the original. He first came across it in a book about “Naive Kunst”. For some reason, this painting was classified as that, among numerous Yugoslavian examples, some French, and a notable German entry, Friedrich Gerlach. It was only a black and white reproduction, not particularly crisp, but the cracks in the thickly-painted clouds were still intriguingly visible.

A nom de plume was chosen for this drawing which refers to Edgar Allan Poe. So the original accent is nicely rounded off by the American influence in the form of two late 19th century American sources augmenting or instrumentalizing one Polish-Jewish, 1937 modernist, original inspiration. What this means is that it tells you something about the drawing’s author’s mindset. The artist-illustrator would also maintain that there is a certain touch of Will Elder noticeable in certain details. Which then would make for a third, second half of the 20th century, modern-popular, as opposed to modernist, American influence. The above-mentioned pen name was “Hans Pfaall” (see signature in lower left corner), lending an additional phallic touch to the drawing, already well endowed with phallic forms (eight, or nine, depending on the viewer’s susceptibility to phallic forms). A touch of quaintness is the choice of pink tone-paper, in reminiscence to a certain cheap stock of recycled writing paper, not widely available anymore. The drawing originally also featured a cat (taken from the above-mentioned mourning-painting) with very long hair, which was then erased and replaced by a multitude of overgrown house flies (Musca domestica, of the suborder Cyclorrhapha). To complete the list of references, and, in the process, to add one German influence (an addition of questionable historical and moral sensitivity perhaps), the self portrait of the painter of the Mourning Picture, sitting in a lawn chair and reading a newspaper, originally moustached, wearing a bowler hat, had his head replaced with that of a dog-creature which is a rather faithful copy of a drawing by the German author Wolfdietrich Schnurre, who illustrated his own books. This dog face, bearing the caption “Arrogant, aber von Adel”, was featured in his 1965 novel “Die Aufzeichnungen des Pudels Ali”.

The drawing was never used for its intended purpose, it was not shown, for it was too attention-drawing. So it was sent back to the draftsperson (the drawing’s author). Drawing and explanatory note © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the International Balloonist’s Society for the Applied Arts

Mannaheim Progressive Pro-Choice Clinic

Woman’s Medical Centre with 1886 Benz Patent Motorcar (Oils on canvas on wood, 50,3 x 62,8cm)

Photographic reproduction of a painting which is positioned  somewhere on the borderline demarcating the difference between the entirely satisfactory with added interest, and one of the lesser efforts in the field of true painting. Due to experiments with the preparation and priming of the canvas, the behavior of the paint was unexpected. Thus the execution lacks fluency. The technically inferior quality of the photographic reproduction adds to the impression of a very strange atmosphere permeating the picture, ambiguously oscillating between  moodiness and objectivism. The symbolism; moon, spiral, car, and brick, is rather balanced, but with the addition of some sea shells, it is clearly shifted into the realm of female reproduction. (Of course, this is based on highly untrustworthy  assessments of gender-classification of objects. Ed.)

The building does, or at least did, actually exist, somewhere on the British Islands. The photocopy of a photograph of the building from a book on Brutalist architecture garnered at the Düsseldorf Central Library some 25 years ago exists, yet, due to negligence, lacks any inscription for further contextual elucidation of the source. So neither information on the architect nor the actual location of this interestingly proportioned edifice can be provided, much to this author’s disgust.

This painting is based on that drawing. Drawing is finer, possibly more accomplished. Yet the painting adds something. Mostly it adds the je-ne-sais-quoi. Painting and explanatory note © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the International Pro-Brick Society IPB

House for Quasi Phantom Regions

Country House with Hip Roof B 8090
(Oils on canvas on wood, 50,3 x 62,8cm)

This house is for the lover of open country, but with no need for the flora and fauna usually associated with it. It is a house for the Frommian necrophiliac. This country lies on the surface of a planet roughly the size of Earth, but much heavier and with a very thick, almost water-like foggy atmosphere. Consequently the ground resembles the deep sea floor on Earth. A hint of some form of vegetation, either aquatic or coniferous can be surmised or easily dismissed in the milky background. Tastefully arranged on the premises are one replicated Silurian nautilus shell, various simplified crystal sculptures made of polymethylmethacrylate coated with transparent SiO2 thin films in hues of yellow, pink, and green, and several geometric primitives of synthetic plaster. The house itself is the sparsely ornamented, simplified version of a terranean postmodern country house catering for the aspiring single person or couple in the lower medium affluent income range and has the catalog number B 8090. It is especially suited for the writer of semi-popular fantasy novels. Note that it comes without garage, as such is not necessary on a planet without any destinations to travel to. The windows, though ostensibly made of some glass-like material, are either covered from the inside with blue boards, or the whole house might be filled with some blue tinted medium or nutritive solution. The inside of the house might be dark, artificially illuminated, or not existing. The owner or owners of the house might be immaterial, but still in need of spiritual nourishment, provided by the large space crystal floating in the dense, soup-like sky. This atmospheric painting © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the Fantasy Society

Planetary School for Youth-Oriented Teachings of Right and Wrong

Hardt-Waltherr Hämer, Juvenile Delinquent Youth Project,
Ingolstadt, 1962-66 (A3, 2016)

This voluminous structure of concrete and gold tinted glass is located in a progressive settlement called “Ingolstadt” on a far-away double planet in the system of the theoretical Öpik-Oort-Cloud. The building is fashioned as a life-size replica of the actual edifice, the municipal theater in the city of Ingolstadt, Germany, Earth. The building itself is rather imposing, especially in the realm of the horizontal, but this aspect of massiveness has been nicely set off with an arrangement of haphazardly placed street signs of unclear meaning, and a carefully unfinished look of the surrounding street scenery. Also a meticulously arranged add-on to the composition are the two vintage motor-bikes of German make parked in front of it. They belong to the school’s most progressive teachers, one fatherly male religion teacher, and one instructor  for violence-free negotiation techniques of uncommitted gender. The helmet placed to the side of the motor bike in front serves as a signal of trust. This is a theft-free zone. Looming over the horizon, the second planet of the double system, which is also earth-like, with vast and mostly untapped supplies of oxygen and water, left unsettled, serving as a recreational area for the partner planet. In the sky, floating over the school, a general semantics surveillance unit which  scans the whole perimeter of that school for occurrences of plain right and plain wrong according to objectivist criteria. The  gold-tinted glass panes of the building reflect the surroundings in unclear abstract configurations while still giving a hint of transparency. This atmospheric rendering © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the Progressive Society

Euro-Continental Pro America Church “Paul Gerhardt”

Paul Gerhardt Church Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf with 1903 Cadillac Model A Runabout (A3; 42×29,7cm)

Behold here a fine example of evangelical church design in the vein of tasteful international modernism, a sight, not altogether typical, but not unusual either in a time when there was still a lively interest in all church things, yet the decline of church business was already clearly visible on the horizon of time as men know it (not geological time). Witness the gleam of the main building’s big glass front – a huge abstract dyptich of biblical proportions – which is clearly an early Euro-continental reference to the big coloured front face tradition of modern American churches. This church, built many decades ago, at some not exactly verifiable point in the 1960s, still stands, yet is robbed of its dominant feature; the space around it. Today, it is sadly hidden behind parked cars and fences, and swallowed up by attached public service facilities: an old people’s home, a kindergarten.

Note how the nave is separated from the church tower in this design. A separation of things usually compacted into one edifice might be due to conscious conceptual considerations, or simply a sign of the times. What this separation signifies is the American-Fordian thought and practice pattern of division of labour – the tower; the reaching out facility, both reaching out for the congregation, reaching out for god (also a structure akin to a giant billboard/beacon with built in audio component) – the congregation and worship hall a place of production, production of faith, the plant proper.

A note of significance in consideration of this aspect of division: the church was designed not by a star of modern church building, but a lesser architect by the name of Kurt Hatlauf, who also designed several commercial buildings in and around Gelsenkirchen, and for some time served as the manager of the local football club of national fame, a post which surely earned him substantial recognition and probably was deemed the more salient factor of his career. So obviously a figure whose feet were planted squarely, but separately, one in the world of commerce, the other in a world of spiritual values (achievement/ fame, worship/faith). According to oral history, Kurt Hatlauf liked driving around in big American cars, which helps in reconstructing the motivational background for this attempt at an American style church (unable yet to hide its European origins), the Americanism further underlined here by the inclusion of a giant size Kachina doll sculpture.This rendering © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the IPA Society

Haus am Horn – A System House for the Modern Couple

Gerorg Muche, Haus am Horn, 1923
(A3; 42×29,7cm)

This house, a monument to the phallic guilt complex of modern patriarchal architecture, lives in a place of rich historical meaning for a certain variety of people. The hypothetical new owners, formers employees of the local financial institute which co-financed the costly renovation and restoration of this model building for the system family, exerting their ownership rights and overriding certain restrictive laws concerning historical hallmark structures, tried to add to the concept by painting the building a strange variety of pink, and placing a gaily painted totem pole of western American red cedar in the style of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast of North America on the premises. A nice wooden smell wafts through the area which is repellent to the common clothes moth, tineola bisselliella.

Looking at photographs of the original edifice, one is befallen by a baffling mixture of internal reactions. The masculinity of the design coexists with a maternal womb-like character achieved. The legend of the immortal uterus turned into stone. A 1923 drawing by Farkas Molnár, entitled “Georg and El Muche and the Haus am Horn” reveals a certain hetero-erotic dream aspect of the original concept. Before the erection (sic!) of the building, the land served as a vegetable garden for the local school for architects. Look at this 2016 drawing. Discern the different symbolic items distributed over the picture. A pole, a hose, a ball, a wall, a building. Generic vegetation. A Mark 1 inoculator floating in the sky above the chimney.Atmospheric rendering © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the International Wedding Ring

Haus Ziegler, Lepsiusstraße 112, Berlin-Steglitz

Hugo Häring, Haus Ziegler, Lepsiusstr, with 1936 Opel Olympia
(A3; 42×29,7cm)

Colour correctness of this image can only be approximate. Possible peachy hues befit the intended atmosphere. This building can still be found at the address Lepsiusstraße 112 in Berlin Steglitz. This rendering depicts it surrounded by vegetation not typical for this region. The rest of the setting is fairly accurate, though partly guesswork. The German car in the foreground is of exactly the same date as the portrayed edifice. While the building is starkly modernist and, indeed, conceptual, the car is a slightly Germanized and downsized version of a Ford car. Picture the building as an old and also moderately neglected farm house in Vermont, picture the car as a Ford, and try and consider the person inside the house. This person is not the engineer Fritz Ziegler, but a different kind of character. After having unsuccessfully tried to stay of a beleaguerment by local aliens which are indeed not aliens but a kind of native sort of aliens (or, “Old Ones”), the original Ziegler was transferred to a metal cylinder while the actual person inside the house is not really a person but one of those said aliens, who has taken the place of Ziegler. You enter that place, expecting to find Ziegler, wanting to discuss his predicament. He, it, she (the impostor), is sitting in an armchair, has a buzzy voice, doesn’t move the lips while talking almost inaudibly, and occasionally nods to lend the mask it is wearing  a semblance of liveliness. Also, a pair of gloves are needed to hide the claw-like appendices. The legs are altogether useless, since their chitinous character makes them awkward and noisy as tools of propulsion on the medium of a wooden floor. It is good that there is a car in front of that house. If you are able to operate it, you might be able to flee this place. Some people might consider that angle in the house’s front as the most telling of its evil modernist hallmarks. In truth, it can be easily imagined that that angle, once you have gotten used to it, endears you to this place. What with that special kind of decorative and frost-resistant facade, the clinkers arranged in an order called the “Prüß-Verband”.Atmospheric rendering © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the International Pro Brick Society

Natural Gas Generator for the Eurasian Market

Waukescha Natural Gas Generator for the Eastern European Region and Asia (45x34cm, oil, spirulina, and glitter pigments on canvas mounted on wood)

This painting, as subtly alluring in its pallette as in the choice of special and unusual pigments, cannot be adequately represented in photography (even when captured with a sensor especially suited to register finest colour nuances without sacrificing exactitude and focus). In fact, even the human eye is a sensor too coarse and surface-bound to understand that painting in this case is not only the coating or covering of a surface with paints of appropriate consistency and opacitiy in a way which concentrates too much on the where and too little on the when, but the loving and time consuming application of a multitude of layers of different degrees of opaqueness or transparency. The ultimate goal is not recognizable or symbolic representation, but the creation of an image with depth, in which even the first insecure tracings and irregular activities of a tentative and searching brush are still detectable under a potentially limitless number of successively applied layers, each adding its own share of happy accidents. The resulting depth is never a strictly two-dimensional and optical phenomenon. The true painting of value always has unique and custom made surface characteristics. The author of this painting is indebted to the teachings of the late Bob Ross, but chose to go the way of stretching production time instead of compressing it. By doing so, he could circumvent the adverse effects of a rushed production, namely that the perceived overall quality of the product suffers under a glance more scrutinizing and resting than fleeting and cursory. This painting is intended to satisfy on the happy accident level as well as on the level of more method-result based western observation systems striving for overall recognizability, structure, and order.

More content related thoughts about the desirability of finding interdependent grid solutions for the application of small unit solutions to medium scale energy requirements over unified and in most regards more hazardous, if theoretically and practically more efficient, large scale energy production solutions, will not be amplified upon here. This space is dedicated to the discussion of technical merits of the painting, not of the depicted object and the ideas it represents.Atmospheric rendering © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the International Interdependent Energy Grid Board

Cologne St. John Baptist with 1901 Oldsmobile Runabout

Karl Band, Cologne St. John Baptist, with 1901 Oldsmobile Runabout (A3; 42×29,7cm)

This is a beautiful example of the art of repair and rebuilding, as practised widely in the middle of the former century, in this undisclosed place, which met with generous structural destruction in the second half of the Second Great War, and thus had a chance to develop a unique style of modernity in rebuilding, a style which flourished for only a little more than one decade, only to be replaced by a still unique, but aesthetically rather unsatisfactory industrialized construction process, using holistically questionable materials like Ytong, autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC), calcium silicate units, and mineral insulation board.

In this short blessed phase before the chemical industrial complex got on its feet again and took over the construction market, brick was the preferred building material; often recycled from the rubble which was lying around in great quantities to be collected and reused or heaped wholesale into artificial hills. Concrete, if it was used, remained mostly unadorned and unhidden, its surface showing the marks of the cast in which it was poured, a practice which developed, outside of its niche as a method of artistic repair for churches and damaged art museums, into a fashion, an alternative International Style utilizing less glass and steel, more brick and concrete, mostly employed in the construction of publically funded municipal buildings, police stations, universities, or social housing projects. This style, though, did not really take hold here, in this undisclosed place, but abroad, were minds were more open, less  numbed.

This church, first recorded in the year 1090, suffered extensive damage during the war, and then became what was locally praised a jewel of modern reconstruction, a reconstruction which was realized by the architect/builder Karl Band, who could be considered the North Rhine Westphalian version of the Bavarian Hans Döllgast.

This church now serves as a combined worship and convention center for the CRUX youth movement, which aims to spiritually cleanse and refresh the world though collective missionary itineracy.

This rendering of that church is embellished with an imaginary natural scenery in the background, a slightly enlarged vintage motorcar, and the stylized depiction of a floating device housing a solar propulsion motor. Atmospheric rendering © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the International Pro Brick Society

Atmospheric Church of Fuzzy Wisdom (Cologne Dellbruck, 1941, View from North)

Karl Band, Köln Dellbrück St. Norbert, Ansicht von Nord 1940, mit 1910 Benz Limousine (A3; 42×29,7cm)

Atmospheric rendering of the Church of Fuzzy Wisdom, situated in a forgotten spot in a forgotten part of a half-forgotten City. Fuzziness is demonstrated by the singular double tower design feature. Entrance, and thus partaking of Fuzzy Wisdom, is facilitated by a special portal unit which leads through the gap between the two towers, into the actual congregation hall. Vehicles of all sorts as well as less ceremonial visitors and delivery personell can also find ingress through a comfortably sized side door which leads through the left (the rational) tower of Fuzzy Wisdom. This practical entrance is facing the north, thus no disturbing, directional sunlight will disturb the minds of the visitors or the architectural unity and dignity of the building. A rather beautiful, off-white, vintage Benz limousine is parked in front ot the north facade, forming a well calculated aesthetic unity with the less mechanical minded edifice.

Floating in the sky over roof of the congregation hall; a spiritual inseminator in the act of spiritualizing an inflatable effigy of an early space-craft design (for a deeper insight in the symbolism of this floating sculpture, see Tellurialism).

This church is officially (in order to appease traditional catholic church authorities) dedicated to a rather nondescript Saint, Norbert Gennep, who was born on the left bank of the Rhine, in the town of Xanten, part of the Electorate of Cologne (Kurfürstentum Köln), which was an an ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire and existed from the 10th to the early 19th century. Saint Norbert was a rather quintessential possessor of Fuzzy Wisdom, whos life principles where as well marked by a distinct careerism and opportunism, and a well pronounced “spiritualism”, which allowed him for instance, to give away all his worldly possessions, without ever falling into the spriitually endangering situation of poverty (non-possession). Note also the following supposedly monist (one-towered, anti-fuzzy) concluding act in Norbet’s life: in the schism following the election of Pope Innocent II in 1130, Norbert supported Innocent and resisted Antipope Anacletus II. In Norbert’s last years, he was chancellor and adviser to Lothair II, the Holy Roman Emperor, persuading him to lead an army in 1133 to Rome to restore Innocent to the papacy. The all-knowing Fuzzy Authority has the unfailing power though to render all and especially those acts of seeming determination and single-direction into the parallel-opposite, thus establishing perfect equanimity and neutrality (see Kohelet 2:11 “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.” Atmospheric rendering © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the Society of Fuzziness and Equanimity

Anti-Nationalist Church Feetze, Altmarkkreis Salzwedel

Anti-Nationalistic Village Church Feetze, Altmark Salzwedel District, with 1923 BMW R32 Motorbike (A3: 29,7x42cm)

This village church situated in an agnostic district of Germany is run by a renegade protestant woman priest who announces her progressive leanings by parking her vintage motorbike in front of said church. Said priest also commissioned a local plastics manufacturer with the manufacturing of an extremely lightweight acrylic air sculpture, fastened so to the church steeple as to appear weightlessly floating. The four tubular devices, dyed with a modified e-ink and radium amalgam, can be triggered electronically to interact on a high frecency level and assume any colour in the standard CMYK realm. Thus, all types of national and organizational flags and heraldic symbols can theoretically be rendered. The air sculpture transforms the static nature of individual national and political colour designations into something infinitely flexible and transmogrificational. On a symbolical level, the church thus signals itself to be out of bounds, truly international, anti-segregational. Only on this politically, culturally, and geographically nullified level, it can function as a place from which world-healing words, deeds, and thoughts emanate. The church buiding itself is severely threatened in its structural integrity by dry rot, mould infestation, and plaster falling from the ceiling into the mouths of the singing or open mouthed sleeping congregation. The free floating energy it constantly produces is exposed to dangerous channeling efforts through various world-heritage conservational programs and covert financial support by the EKD (German Evangelical Church), trying to reintegrate it into the standard top-down approach to organization which traditionally renders all human interaction into potentially violent and pressurizing attempts at domination. The aforementioned woman priest has announced a public self-immolation in front of the church at some unspecified point in the near future to protest against all forms of government, church, and political interference.
© 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide

Invitation to an Exhibition

You are Beautiful, too – an Exhibition for Children, Humans, and Finite Automatons, (A5, 2015)

This invitation card is in fact a souvenir card. Due to recent admonishments by paperless office activists, art mongers are now discouraged from sending out printed invitation cards. Instead, electronic invitiations are send out, and only those who venture out and actually visit the space presenting the physical artworks are allowed to take one card per person with them, so that they can deposit it on their coffeetable, fasten it with a magnet on the refrigerator door, or maybe even pin it to a pinboard, if they have one. The card then serves as a potentially permanent reminder of the event and where, when, and why it was obtained. It is designed to survive hundreds or thousands of years, if preserved properly in a sealed, clear, archival plastic sleeve which must be purchased separately. The idea is, of course, to ensure the artist and his work a very effective, totally voluntary kind of publicity, a kind of private publicity, so to speak. Incidentally, this card is based on the drawing “Karl Band, Holy Trinity Church, Cologne Poll, with 1906 Compound Touring car”, and was supposed to feature a hallmark of cautiously modern church design by the prolific church architect Karl Friedrich Heinrich Band (1900-1995), in conjunction with a Vintage car of a slightly earlier date. In fact, the historical truth is complex and was not sufficiently explored nor documented by the artist. The church, as it is now standing looks totally unlike the depicted church, which very much resembles the original church from 1928, which burned out in the year 1943. It was built from 1950-1953 after plans by Karl Band, who, according to the spirit of that time, tried to use as many remaining parts of the original as possible. The semi-original tower by Karl Band had to be torn down in the year 1968 (a very symbolic date), and was replaced with a yet more modern one by Hans Schilling. The church, as it stands to this day, is an example of typical brick based mid-century church design which has little or no similarities to the depicted one.

---

You are Beautiful, too

a poem for an exhibition

on the theme of a flock of sparrows joined by one escaped canary
and the author feeding birds

Six times seven-teen
Have you seen?

Rhymes make happy times

The sparrows look at me and beg
While I stand solemnly
on just one leg

With tiny beaks they eat and tweet
And stand on tiny sparrow’s feet

“You are not dressed in colours gay
But you prefer plain brown and grey!”

“You dance and frolic so around
I see the birds, but not the ground”

Then the crumbs are eaten all
And I stand lean, and stiff, and tall

The sparrows have eaten and flown away
And left me feathers, brown and grey

(Oh you creatures of the sky!
Will ever we see from eye to eye?)

Only a yellow canary
Is left behind, and looks at me
I wonder, when the sparrows look at you
What do they think? You’re beautiful, too?

Card design and original drawing © 2017 by Torsten Slama and the Tellurian Society

The Sirian Experiment

St. Paul’s Church, Schwenningen, with early BMW Motorbike (42×29,7cm, pencil and coloured pencil on paper, 2015)

The image above depicts a worship centre of the heliocentric kind, devoted to adoring the heavens and everything above. An art work was commissioned to make a visual statement about the function of the building. The artist decided to create a holographic projection of unclear direction—a wavelike pattern is discernible, one assumes that there is some kind of dynamic involved, but it is not clear whether the waves are undulating in a downward direction, sent from some heavenly entity, or whether they are going up, towards said entity. Also, the waves are banded in a multicoloured fashion, but clearly not following the known order of wavelengths in the visible electromagnetic spectrum. The colours in which they present themselves (or, are presented) seem to follow an unfathomable (artistic?) taste pattern, which however might hypothetically be based on some scientific principle on the level of quantum mechanics. (Theologians across the world are very enamored with quantum theory, as quanta are known to behave erratically, contrary, obstinate, and wayward, when observed by a merely human observer. They do that on a basis of knowing things before they occur, communicating (?) with each other on a pre-emptive timeline, in short, displaying many characteristics of Godly perfection. Thus, in an ontogenetic system of proof, they are showing exactly that which God must possess, which shows that he, she, it, must exist.)

As an afterthought, the artist added a floating three-dimensional optical illusion to remind human observers of the futility of observation, of the necessity to stop observing and start worshipping. The progressive parson to whom this church was assigned parks his vintage BMW motorbike in front of the church to remind his parish of the parallel nature of worldliness and spirituality, the necessity to practice parallel thinking.

* * *

“I remember […] reading an agreeable tale about a species of highly intelligent giraffes who travelled by spaceship from their solar system to ours, to ask if our sun was behaving cruelly to us, as theirs had recently taken to doing to them.”
(Doris Lessing)

“Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.” 
(Pierre-Simon Laplace)

Illusrative sketch and explanatory note © 2017-2021 by Torsten Slama, Critical Heliocentrics Society

The Friendly Inspector

The Friendly Inspector (42×29,7 cm, 2014)

This is a design for a monumental machinistic sculpture with slight hyperdimensional attributes. The machine comes delivered together with a floating satellite which is able to find its way in and out of a given dimension through tiny wormholes. The state of reentering one dimension is depicted here. The machine itself is designed for mainly benign and oracularly purposes. Its services are directed at comfort- or advice-seeking individuals who receive messages of a non-verbal character, relayed to the machine by its satellite which can probe and spectralize possible realities from multiple dimensions. In rare cases the Friendly Inspector can develop a certain kind of wrath and become punitive and disciplinarian in character, which gives this machine its intended messianic character. This machine is to be stationed in appropriately isolated spots, to serve as an acceptable surrogate for religious or mythical figures of the genital type, like Jesus Christ, who have lost all meaning or are accepted as mere history, with no function in the day-to-day struggle for self-realization of the individual.

Exhibition for Sorcerers and Sodomites

Exhibition Announcement and commemorative postcard (“hand-lettered”, in the style of “Knaurs Lexikon der alten Malerei”)

The following is an explanatory note, illuminating the origin of the exhibition’s title in connection with the shown exhibits, which are drawings and paintings of machines, mainly reciprocating engines, belonging to the group of heat engines.

“Und ob ich gleich keine Übeltat beging, dadurch ich das Leben verwirkt hätte, so war ich jedoch so ruchlos, daß man (außer den Zauberern und Sodomiten) kaum einen wüstern Menschen antreffen mögen.”

“And though I did no deed evil enough to forfeit my life, yet was I so reckless that, save for sorcerers and sodomites, no worse man could be found.”

Hans Jakob Christoph von Grimmelshausen. Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch (The Adventurous Simplicissimus). Book III, Chapter XI

Sodomites* commit the sexual act as a simple in-out, analogous to the movement of the piston in a reciprocating engine. The linear motion of in-out is historically a male model of dynamics. (Reciprocating engines then convert this linear motion into a circular motion, which is commonly constructed as a female kind of motion.)

Sorcerers believe they can get things done by other means than with their own hands, so they use magic, or magical machines.

Both these aspects make machines so ubiquitous and so powerful: their movements are restricted, free of emotion, and their productivity is in magical ways surpassing the natural human productivity. Incidentally, the machine also is commonly interpreted as a monument to western, masculine civilization.

*even though the term is now used to describe a wide variety of non-procreational sexual activities, it was originally far more clearly defined and solely used for people engaging in anal sex.The term and its interpretations can be used as a very instructive example for discussions of the social construction of deviancy, yet this is not the issue here.

 

La Machine femelle / Le Reste parfait

La Machine femelle / The Female Machine
(Oil on canvas mounted on wood, 50×27 cm, 2013)

Note that the positioning of these two paintings in one textual context created certain problems for the author, which are reflected in the result.

The clever kind of autoportrait below is a sort of companion piece to the inter-dependent partner painting above, but sold separately…

Le Reste parfait / The Perfect Rest
(Oil on canvas mounted on wood, 43×30 cm, 2013)

In actuality, the top painting is wider, but not as high as the other painting. The second billed painting was painted first. The Female Machine was painted second. The titles are fairly sexist. The phallic machine is resting, exhausted from phallic magic-making, the female machine seems more sturdy and busy, which overall has much to do with world wide reality. Both paintings are fairly small. They are currently, nicely framed, on display at an undisclosed third-party-location in a city by a lake.

© 301.2 by The Instrumentalists, Torsten Slama Historical Society

House for the Successful Magician’s Third Spouse

House for Successful Magician’s Third Spouse (with Benz Motorbike) [42×29,7cm, 2013]

The story behind this picture is not entirely satisfactory and has a few ethical issues. Possible implications concerning the Successful Magician’s domestic situation are based on one specific, questionable kind of speculation. The contained symbolism is subject to internal debate. Success is oftentimes but the wealth and authority associated with successful mendacity, hypocrisy, manipulation. This is the Successful Magician’s kind of success. He still finds enough traditionally minded potential spouses of petit-bourgeois origin to have his pick. His first chosen partner was maybe a mistake, the second one not mistaken enough, the third spouse-partner-wife seems by virtue of her young age and natural breeding suitable to give rise to his long wished for successor (to make success complete), and also take care of his finances. The story could be so changed that all protagonists are of the opposite (or same) sex. All gender and age combinations are possible and would produce stories of a similarly or differently perceived character. In the above described form, it is also a story which will soon be outmoded, or, if it occurs, will be rightfully seen as highly unusual and freakish, hinting at possible abuse.

© 2017 by the Torsten Slama Historical Society

The World of the (Non-) Euclidean Central “I”

The World of the (Non-) Euclidean Central ”I” [42×29,7cm, 2013]

The  (Non-) Euclidean Central “I”. Something so abstract, elusive and yet so intimate.  Inside: the perfect sphere, round and immeasurable, protected by the glass pyramid of calculation. The inner walls of the fleshly host incrusted with calcifications, crystallizations, soft matter transformed into hard, dead matter. Undertake one bungling step through the apartment of your self with the lights turned off.

[…] after a while there was a further clicking in the receiver, and I strained my ears to listen. Again I called down, “Warren, are you there?”, and in answer heard the thing which has brought this cloud over my mind. I do not try, gentlemen, to account for that thing—that voice—nor can I venture to describe it in detail, since the first words took away my consciousness and created a mental blank which reaches to the time of my awakening in the hospital. Shall I say that the voice was deep; hollow; gelatinous; remote; unearthly; inhuman; disembodied? What shall I say? It was the end of my experience, and is the end of my story. I heard it, and knew no more. Heard it as I sat petrified in that unknown cemetery in the hollow, amidst the crumbling stones and the falling tombs, the rank vegetation and the miasmal vapours. Heard it well up from the innermost depths of that damnable open sepulchre as I watched amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance beneath an accursed waning moon. And this is what it said:
“YOU FOOL, WARREN IS DEAD!”

 

(Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Statement of Randolph Carter, 1919

Women’s Medical Centre with First Motor Driven Vehicle

Women’s Medical Centre with 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen by Rheinische Gasmotorenfabrik Benz & Cie. (Pencil, coloured pencil, acrylics, shellack. A3, 2013)

Depicted is a medical centre exclusively for women, offering medical treatment for diseases of the female genital apparatus and applications of advanced pro-choice technology. The Benz three-wheeler parked in front of the clinic is a permanent installation reminding of a period where men were still relatively unchallenged in their claim over the field of artificial invention, as opposed to “natural” creation, the female secret, Bachofen’s swampland of unlimited fertility.

The staff of the medical centre elected to dedicate their institute to the renowned Scottish electrical engineer and laser scientist A. Catrina Bryce. The official designation for the institute is thus: Women’s Medical Centre “Ann Catrina Bryce”. A schematized, floating model of the laser was chosen as the sign of the centre, at night emitting a beam searching the night sky, reminding the nearby female population of the fact that now women are in control of phallic technology, putting it to empowering pro-choice use in advanced abortion procedures and the use of carbon dioxide (CO2) laser beams to vaporize abnormal cervical tissue. The spiral shape of the laser emitting beacon refers to one of the oldest symbols concerning everything anti-phallic, also alludes to contraception via Intrauterine-System (IUS), or Hormonic Coil.Illustrative sketch and explanatory note © 2013 by Torsten Slama

Dionysian Cult Centre with 1911 Renault 2-Seater

Dionysian Cult Centre with 1911 Renault 2-Seater
(297 × 420mm, pencil, coloured pencil, acrylics on paper, © 2013 by the Tellurian Society)

The title and conceptual framework of this drawing ought to be understood before the background of Johann Jakob Bachofen’s work on matriarchy and gynaecocracy, Das Mutterrecht. According to Bachofen, human civilisation went through three stages: a wild nomadic, tellurian stage, the “lunar” period of female supremacy, then the backlash of the Dionysian period, worshipping the phallus, favouring the anus over the vagina, favouring intoxicating masculine wine over female milk and honey, followed by the Apollonian period, modernity, the age of reason and necrophilia (now in a process of dissolution, entering the enigmatic, presumably female, Aquarian stage).

The depicted cult centre is of the Dionysian-Apollonian type*. It offers safe outlets for the Dionysian impulses of domesticated Apollonian Males. Wild, intoxicated, sex-crazed orgies are not to be expected here, these are relegated to Bacchantian cult centres, the dance-clubs, as opposed to the model railway, antique car, or life steam clubs, which are all part of the Dionysian-Apollonian category. This Dionysian Cult Centre is a place where playful, supposedly harmless necrophilia is taking place. Necrophilia is the supremacy-oriented form of sexuality ascribed to men by the combined forces of Dionysus and Apollo. We ought to bear in mind that quartz watches, pocket calculators, microcomputers, laptop computers, tablet computers, cell phones, “smart” phones, and many types of cars and mechanical devices (also child pornography and tame popular music) are all part of the large necrophiliac outlet device network for Dionysian impulses. Soon these cult centres will be demolished all over the world, relegated to the dust heap of history, as we enter a new age which will put an end to the ill-regulated sun-worshipping** Apollonian rationality so inseparably tied to frenzied Dionysus, and bring forth the real, biophile rationality of the well-regulated, tellurian woman-god-serving era of the moon and the atom again.Illustrative sketch and explanatory note © 2013 by Torsten Slama

*In fact, the author is struggling here with the drawing’s title. It seems that what is depicted is clearly an Apollonian-Dionysian cult centre.

**See also Lewis Mumford’s concept of sun worship, worship of speed, empty space.llustrative sketch and rumination © 2013 by Torsten Slama