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

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Haus am Horn – A System House for the Modern Couple

Georg 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 in reference to 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

World Wide Instrumentation Centre with 1912 Packard Landaulet

World Wide Instrumentation Centre with 1912 Packard Landaulet
(A3, mixed media, © 2013 by The Instrumentalists)

After the great unification of all continents into one supercontinent Eufricasia-Panamerica, the need for a coordinated world wide interactive system of communication and production is stated and instigated by the Instrumentalists. The whole world joins in multilingual agreement, and thus a Centre for World Wide Instrumentation is set up in Tripolitania, formerly district of Libya. a medium-grade metropolitan area located nearly exactly in the geographical centre of Eufricasia-Panamerica.

If vagueness, ambiguity and symbolism are reactionary forces bringing unrest, totalitarianism, and war, World Wide Instrumentation, with the totally concise and logical flow of goods, services, and communication it provides, will pave the way to a bright future of love and happiness. The dangers of a chronically crisis-ridden world economy or the inadvertent cross breeding of all sorts of squirrels into a race of super squirrels can be easily averted by the world wide employment of completely standardized instruments of measurement, production, transportation, and communication. A universal currency will soon be followed by a universal language for communication between people, animals, and machines: POYUTL, a language consisting of three consonants and three vowels, 21 syllables, and thus, using the well known formula of Newton, a total of 210 two-syllable words, which can express about everything. Thus, according to Tellurian principles, one Tellurian deity, OUY-PYTOLU, will come into being, a sentient and conscious superorganism, composed of all people, animals, and things on the surface of the earth and under.© 2021 by Hecate Herma Ecdysone, The Instrumentalists, Torsten Slama Historical Society

The Parable of the Immortal Uterus

The Parable of the Immortal Uterus, 297 × 420mm, pencil, coloured pencil, acrylics on paper, © 2013 by The Parabolist Society

Please read the following excerpt from a conversation between the humanist, the monk, and the priest with full mental alertness. Read it with an open mind. Heed the pitfalls of untrustworthy translation.

The humanist: ” The fruit is rare. No tears before. I imagine this story then has traditionally been a more trivial and exquisitely romantic accident.”

The monk said: ” Truly. But these poems belong to the family of food, drink and boudoir stories. Moreover most breeze-and-moonlight tales but indulge in secret relations with women about eloping. They just do not have the dark children’s true release one or two. Think this: into the world of its passion color ghosts contrast with previous tradition. “

The humanist: ” Why don’t you and I have to take this great degree and some is not a virtue? ”

The monk said: ” Are you with me and I to the unreal immortal uterus, and witness the fool delivery of this romantic evil ghost? Now has half dust but still not complete works. ”

Priest : ” Not only that will go with you.*Illustrative sketch and translation © 2021 by Torsten Slama

*Zhen Shiyin is understood but unintelligible. “Stupid ” is anything. Then I came up, smiled and asked: ” The second division, please. ” The monk is also busy in reply when asked. Shiyin is to have said: ” Comfortable smell immortal. division on causal real world rare. But if I understand your disciple Yu, turbidity big dumb is preparing a fine disciple by washing its ear. Listening can also be a warning from sinking. ” Alternative Title laughs: ” This is a mystery not be pre-discharged. Then don’t forget two people can come out of the fire pit. ” Shi Yin listened, too inconvenienced to ask for laughs: ” Mystery not be pre-discharged, but suitable for a cloud fool! Somehow or can see? ” The monk said: ” If you ask it but once. ” She took out and give Shiyin. Shiyin took turns having a distinctive look at jade table with clear new writing. A ” magic stone”:  There are several (4) words. Now she wants to look at it when the monk said: “To fairyland is strong from the hands away, and one was a stone arch with four characters but fantasyland.llustrative sketch and translation © 2021 by Torsten Slama

Multi-Purpose Worship Centre “Sindelfingen”

Multi Purpose Centre “Sindelfingen”, 2012, Oil on canvas, 40,3 x 53,3 cm

This former motor hotel was acquired at an undisclosed date by the Illusionist Society Sindelfingen and converted into a multi purpose and worship centre. All kinds of gatherings are taking place here, suitable for all age-groups and with a clear anti-violence bias. All community gatherings are thus designed to be completely pressure free, allowing all kinds of individual expression, from introvert brooding to carefree dancing. The only commandment to be followed is that of interdependability, that is, everything is done with the fellow creature in mind. Animals and plants are always included in the gatherings, preferably in their actual form, or at least in effigy. It follows automatically that whatever is taking place in this centre is always in accordance with known Tellurian principles. The centre therefore forms a spiritually viable alternative to the city church. The layout is strictly Tellurian: the horizontal plane is for togetherness, the vertical form for compartmentalized administration and individual accommodation purposes. Two crystal shaped monitor probes made from space-age UltraQuartz™ sheets are homeostatically designed to use solar irradiation for buoyancy.Painting and explanatory note © 2021 by Torsten Slama and The Illusionist Society/Hekate Sibonga (Dir.)

Bungalow for the Magician

Bungalow for the Magician, 42×27,9cm (DIN A3),
pencil and coloured pencil on paper

A temporary country home for the Magician. The Magician specializes in making people vanish. His spells are potent only in that way. In all other ways he is a very unassuming, normal type of person. Working his spells draws on his overall spiritual energy, leaves him exhausted. Lacking any formal education, he has to rely on his spells to sustain him economically. He saves enough money through appearances in hotels and at festivities in small-town multi-purpose centres during the holiday season or through engagements on cruise ships to be able to afford a simple country retreat for his free time. The cellarless and easily relocatable building features a miniature pool and fitness related equipments to allow him to replenish lost energies through careful, peaceful training in solitude, meditating on a wild nomadic tellurian future. Other items related to spirituality (the stylized magician’s hat as protective cover for very delicate saplings), and sexuality (the orgonic sea-shell) are also part of the basic lay-out.

The house is available in similar form for all people interested in country retreats in wooded regions off the coastal areas, where lot prices are affordable and bird sounds and occasional appearances of badgers, ferrets, or racoons delight the well-honed biophile sensitivities of the gentleman tramp.© 2021 by Herma Ecdysone, Kurt Schessmanweil, Torsten Slama

19th Century Farmhouse Revival Unit

Black Forest House with (51) Pegasi B Square Tubing Sculpture
297x420mm, pencil, coloured pencil, copper leaf

Drawing of a  synthetic housing unit in the 19th century farmhouse revival style, located in Furtwangen, Schönenbach/Schwarzwald, with a mid-sized modernist sculpture in the foreground. The building hides its stilted construction under a deceptively massive outer hull made from  shingle and plaster, replicated in hard foam.

The modernist sculpture in the foreground, made from gold-plated square tubing, as used for vent shafts in extrasolar habitats, stays in harmonic contact with the floating space crystal and its recharging unit, thus establishing a meaningful connection between heaven and earth. The harmonies created are those of the rainbow and in a strictly diatonic minor (aeolian) scale. However, an important component of forbidden bulk second-harmonic generation is inseparable from the surface contribution in all practical experimental situations.

Freshly washed linen hanging from a line demonstrates a keen sense of order and cleanliness, balanced with enough taste and humanity to appreciate the beautiful artefacts created by faux decaying plaster and mock age-old brick work exposed which lend the house’s beautifully crafted outer coating its unique charm.© 2023 by Herma Ecdysone, Torsten Slama, Manfred Gorre, International Publications World Wide

City Church “Böblingen”

City Church “Böblingen”, 297x420mm, pencil, coloured pencil, gold leaf

Concept sketch for a city church. Spiritual energy levels in Central European cities and municipalities are in rapid decline. This development is not limited to European soil, but a worldwide problem. Decline in spiritual energy levels can be easily linked to the decline of criminal energy levels. Smoking bans, optimized street illumination schemes, and safety measures of all kinds make the reliance on spiritual energy to prevent hazardous accidents superfluous.

Certain measures can be taken to raise spiritual energy levels. Worship centres afford an opportunity to practice humility and are therefore the means of choice to raise spiritual energy levels.

This design is especially suited for medium-sized towns located beyond metropolitan regions in Europe. The architecture is unobtrusive, with a light touch of Wilhelmian moodiness. The building has a compact form factor, can easily be prefabricated in great quantities from lightweight plastics (e.g. NALDENE™ by Thermo Fisher Scientific) and anchored where needed. Crystal spawning rocks scattered in the area create an esoteric mood, openness for revelations. Floating above is a cheap, nuclear powered energizer unit in the process of charging a small space crystal.© 2023 by Herma Ecdysone, Torsten Slama, Manfred Gorre, International Publications World Wide

Black Forest House with Mossi Figure

Black Forest house “Janus” with Mossi ancestral figure (42×29,7cm, 2011)

A home for the pattern recognition therapist and his family in a mildly crystal-spawning setting, characterized by its gently rolling layer of powdery soil. The place is ideal as a retreat for the Lunar type who wants to escape the Solar world.

Two openings in the basement are permanently accessible to ensure a smooth functioning of the household machinery. The therapist and his wife, who works as a lawyer specialized in copyright infringement and such, and is out during the day, share a bedroom suite and an annexed two sink bathroom under the roof. The children’s quarters, with separate entrance, are located in the back of the first floor. The therapist  his office in the frontal, thatched-roofed, lobe of the first floor. The office is soothingly illuminated through two large multi-colored windows. The entrance for patients is blocked by a large-scale replica of an ancestral figure of the Mossi tribe during sessions. The statue moves only when a secret slot is fed with a magnet card, of which only two copies exist, one for the master, one for the mistress.

The above-described family arrangement is fictional only. In truth the whole house is uninhabited and serves as a giant demonstration of the Jungian model of the human mind, complete with subconscious, atavistic mind, everyday consciousness (Real-I), and the lofty attic (Ideal-I), all separated into Anima- and Animus-dominated parts by a roof which, for reasons opaque to the modern, after-the-fact observer, is divided into a thatched and a shingled section. © 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide

House “Djibi” for the Friend of all Animals

House “Djibi” for the Friend of all Animals. (Oil on canvas-covered panel w/ aluminium coated ornamental frame, 40×53 cm)

House “Djibi” is named after the cat-novel by Felix Salten. Some cats, a dog, and other animals are living and dying and killing each other in the house of an elderly school teacher and his wife. The teacher is grappling with a mild identity crisis, being undecided whether he is too soft of heart, and wishing himself to be stern and unrelenting, before deciding that he is, indeed, a soft sort of man.

Before being assigned its final title, the painting had a working title referring to August Derleth’s house-centered novel “The Lurker at the Threshold”.

The painting tries to look rather encrusted as opposed to smooth. The clouds are trying to look like clouds painted by Walter Leistikow. Flake White Hue and Transparent White were heavily used. Some areas do look like details from Cuthbert Hamilton Ellis’ paintings: rough and unfinished impasto effects prevail in an otherwhise naturalistic but unacademic style.

This is the photographic reproduction authorized by the painter. There exists another photograph of this painting, discernible by ghastly colours and flat lighting, made by a careless professional with a good camera. True appreciation for a given subject in many cases is much better than indifferent technique and superior technology.

See also these verses from “Sophia Trenton: A Moral Poem” (Phi Beta Cappa Poem at Stanford University, June 19, 1920) by Leonard Bacon, as quoted in Donald Knuth’s “The TeXBook”:

Technique! The very word is like the shriek
Of outraged Art. It is the idiot name
Given to effort by those who are too weak,
Too weary, or too dull to play the game.

© 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide

Abandoned Pu-Class Elemental Worship Centre

Theatre for Plutonian Rituals (A4, pencil and coloured pencil, 2011)

Rarely has it been possible to evaluate ideas about the ritual transformation of persons, objects and caves using a range of modern scientific techniques, on an entirely new and potentially high-quality dataset. Such an opportunity is now provided by the recent discovery (by Rickus, Eggmont Duplex, COMET – Oorth Cloud Resort Evaluation Department) and initial contextualization (by Dr. Hecate Sibonga, Uurd University Department of Continuing Education) of an extraordinarily large and well-preserved group of at least nine ritual rocks, caves and objects in a recently abandoned secret territory, situated in the deep interior of the sole continent of an undisclosed planet.

This place of underworld devotion is situated on a minor planet whose space coordinates were possibly periodically re-encrypted with new keys while the site was still in use. The Plutonian rites incorporate devotion techniques of the Munay-Ki, Masonic rites of the Scottish and York variety, as well as elements from certain Confucian concepts of ritualism. Plutonian rituals are closely related to the Schessmanweil belief system, which was specifically designed to counteract the increased heliocentrism of the modern world (in the Schessmanweil system, the lowest place is considered the most honorable one).

Crystals, including floating ones of the Space Crystal class, as symbols of the underworld, are objects of specific devotion. Their capacity to refract and polarize light rays are seen as another means to transform heliocentric sun worship into more meaningful ways of seeking deep enlightenment.
© 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organtzation World Wide

House “Borstel” with Floating Icosahedra

Half-Timbered, Thatched Roofed House near the River Stör with Group of Icosahedrons (297 x 420 mm)

Half-timbered brick house, typical of the marshy regions along the banks of the Stör river. The Stör is an artificial, straight, canal-like river with lovingly detailed riverbank flora, allowing for rich biodiversity, right tributary of the Isabgol, greatest river on the northern hemisphere of the planet Schüssler, which orbits around the sun Arsenum Jodatum in a minor galaxy.

The freely floating group of eikosahedral cages of Sigma-2, commonly called icosahedrons, is part of a scattered cloud of platonic solids which was created to protect vital parts of the planet’s surface from the deadly rays of its sun, thus enabling terraforming to render them habitable.

The illustrated house is the dwelling place for a pattern designer. The nearby willows, overall humidity, gurgling river sounds, create an inspirational atmosphere for the artist dealing in intricate interlocking form-processes.
© 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide

Thatched Half-Timbered Brick House (Frisian Style) with Newtonian Prism

Thatched, half-timbered brick house in the Frisian style, with Newtonian prism, fully synthetic, located in Uurd II

This country home in the Frisian style offers shelter for progressive democrats of the protestant northern variety (deep sunk eyes, long nose, pallor of skin) with a taste for the traditional. The pattern designer living in this house enjoys her Bünting tea with rock candy and cream.

The house features a conventional Space Crystal accompanied by a free-moving prism made of a special ultra-clear aluminium compound, commemorating Newton’s discovery of the fraction of light and his victory over Germany’s Goethe with his idealistic notions about the distribution and nature of colours. The house itself is made of hardened plastic foam blocks in the style of bricks and framework. It is lightweight yet offers superb thermal insulation.

The two trees on the left are of a very rare succulent variety first described by the eminent space plant historian Rick Skrebus: Arborum Astrolobum Uitewaal-Darling.

*

The crystals in the foreground are of the urobilin-coloured variety. Urobilins are the breakdown products of the bile pigment bilirubin. Bilirubin is itself a breakdown product of the heme part of hemoglobin from worn-out red blood cells. Alchemists believed them to be a special transmutation of gold. © 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide 

See also the dedicated site for Low Density Settlement Units for Space People. © 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide

Non-Aristotelian high-speed Passenger Train

Non-Aristotelian Passenger Train after Gustav Reder (A3, pencil and coloured pencil on paper)

This Non-Aristotelian Passenger Train, connecting two subterranean cities on the Planet Gorre, can be seen here racing at full speed through the very hot desert Daphetid, whose sulphuretted carbon sands catalyze a photochemical conversion of atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia by sunlight.  Days on the Planet Gorre last for 376 Earth-hours, and at midday this desert becomes so hot that spontaneous gestation of Salamanders (Caudata and Urodela) occurs.

The Train is modelled after an Edwardian original, but is based on a completely different kind of technology. Whereas the original depends on fossil fuels as a propellant, this engine uses completely different concepts of power generation, based on Alfred Korzybski’s findings as laid out in his General Semantics, E-Prime. It forms an inseparable bond with two elongated Space Crystals, one working as a regular pumping lemma, the second one as the much more powerful Ogden’s lemma, providing extra energy when particularly hot areas have to be crossed at extra high-speed. The above design copyright (c) 2017 by Torsten Slama and International Pictorial Publications Organization World Wide

Cross Fell House

“Cross Fell House” , Low Density Settlement Unit Designs for Space People‎ (Pencil and colored pencil on paper, A4, 2011)

Cross Fell House is the recreation of a municipal building standing at Crossfell, Bracknell Forest, near Mill Pond, Bracknell, United Kingdom.

 This Design based on the building in its original condition, as featured in the 1972 film The Offence by Sidney Lumet. © 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide

House "Brussels"

House "Brussels" with Space Crystal and Charging Unit

This is a not too modest habitat for the well-to-do space traveller seeking a quiet and well secluded retirement haven. This scene shows the all-nourishing space crystal being replenished with essential polarized light with an s-like plane of incidence. This s-polarized light (s meaning senkrecht or, alternatively, sigma) is the light class of choice for a maintenance factor which is slightly deeper than broad, which means it is best suited for a person with deep-set eyes and a melancholic character with a tendency toward brooding, an educational type, tinged by Slavic characteristics, which can be considered representative of a special, slightly narrow-minded but noble humanity.

The joy in speculation and disputation, the tendency toward brooding and meditation, the craving for distances which can never be reached, that plunging into depths which can never be fathomed are more apparent here than a strong sense of reality, an openness to new ideas, or delight in humor and satire.

For more information, please visit the special site for Low Density Settlement Units for Space People.  The above design copyright (c) 2017 by Torsten Slama and International Pictorial Publications Organization World Wide