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

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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.

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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