Posts Tagged ‘Architecture’

Chinese Landscape with Water Flow Research Institute

February 22, 2023
Chinese Landscape with Water Flow Research Institute, oil on ready-to-use “Stylex” canvas w/ stretcher, 30×40 cm

The ancient art of Chinese Landscape Painting aims for universal completeness and peace, just as the Chinese Empire was supposed to reign for eternity. A painting is not complete if it does not bring together the hard, the fluid, the gaseous, which means rock (the mineral world), water, sky (air, fog). Living organisms are either part of the solid world (trees), or transient, animal or human, which are few and far between. Water is the element that flows through the image, from top to bottom, uniting all, making all into one living organism. Never is there harsh light coming from one point, creating light and shadow. Perspective is mostly of the aerial type, which means things in the distance are lighter in tone, as they reach you through fog, fine mists waft between them and the onlooker.

While this type of painting is originally done with ink and a soft brush on paper, here a westernized technique is employed, using oil paints, but heavily diluted, pig bristled flat brush, on cheap, pre-primed canvas with an interesting rectangular grid. The colour scape is muted, the mood not sombre, but peaceful, fresh, cool and gentle. The family of ducks in the lower left corner find their way undisturbed into the pool at the foot of the rocks, fed by cold spring water from the heights. The institute is nestled in the middle ground, free space to the front, a rock wall in the back, top stories and penthouse reaching out for the great emptiness above.

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Low Density Dwelling Unit with Methane Tanks in Carboniferous Period Setting

November 26, 2022

This oil portrait of a country house named by its owner “Judge Dee” is a bit sketchy in areas, but left so by the artist deliberately, as they wanted to free themselves from the shackles that the demon of perfectionism imposes on so many struggling artists. Since the client in this case was fictitious and identical with the contractor, it was easy to reach mutual satisfaction and declare the painting an artistic, if not commercial, success. 

Note that this painting is the result of a process of emigration to the essentially free and unbound realms of Poe’s Nothingness, even though it assumes topicality by incorporating and putting forward climate-saving technology. It deals with the problems with climate unfriendly methane plaguing our wasteful society. Methane here takes the form of “clean”, renewable cooking gas produced by the bacterial decomposition of (fictitious) human waste, mixed with the stool of an assortment of hypothetical pets. This gas is not really “clean”, merely repurposed and relabeled, and great investments in absolutely airtight tanks are crucial to prevent that odourless gas from escaping into the atmosphere and further heat up this planet’s already antediluvian climate. Climate spies equipped with very expensive special cameras will regularly inspect these tanks, and record all escaping methane in beautiful false colour images and films. 

If cooking is not practiced and heating in general superfluous, there are further uses:

CH4 Uses (Methane)

  • It is used in automobiles, ovens and water heater as a fuel.
  • It is used in the generation of electricity.
  • It is used as rocket fuel in its refined liquid form.
  • It is used as an antifreeze ingredient in industries.
  • It is a common ingredient in fertilizer.
  • It is used to sanitize products.

Oil sketch and text © 2052 by Torsten Slama and the SHY Laboratory Group

Way to Work – Strengthening the Links between Active Labour Market Policies and Social Support

June 13, 2022

Way to Work, this drawing ®1992-2022 by Torsten Slama
Way to Work, 9.1 x 12.6 inches, pencil on yellow carton, 2022

This drawing is the recreation of a drawing from 30 years ago. That drawing was nearly identical in composition, but the figure was fully dressed. While the original was not found, presumably lost or sold, a photocopy still existed, begging in its inferior quality for the undertaking of making a new drawing, a handmade copy of the remembered original, coming as close as possible or even surpassing its original craftspersonship (perfectionism/youthful folly). Actually, even though slightly larger than the original A4, the technical execution is inferior, no doubt due to use of single mechanical pencil with HB mine and tip size 0.3 mm instead of multiple finely and variably sharpened wooden pencils of different grades.

The original clothing of the depicted person was first executed, then, by means of an eraser, removed again, and the nude body reconstructed, to achieve something of an Helmut-Newton effect, with a tint of irony perhaps, as the depicted person is not really the preferred Newton body-type. There was the idea that this could be a sort of nudist yoga teacher, but the muscular tonus is not there, nor the general width of the core which normally results from yoga practice. 

The source of the depicted setting is not clearly remembered. In all probability it was inspired or rendered from a photograph of an architectural decoration project by Victor Vasarely somewhere in France, either a shopping centre or university campus.

The following is a non-realized passage concerning dress codes and where nudism would or could be placed on a scale between “casual” and “formal”. 

Please observe the extant photocopy of the 1994 original:

Copy of original drawing, drawing by Torsten Slama, copy made at a Düsseldorf copy shop in 1993

First version (copy) “The second Idyl” A4,  ~1993

Drawing and text © 2052 by Torsten Slama and the SHY Laboratory Group

Recently, at the Film School

May 27, 2022
Film School Student in Akira Kurosawa Jumper, 9.1 x 12.6 inches, pencil and Chinese white on red carton, Drawing 1992 - - 2031 by Torsten Slama and the Media Group
Film School Student in Akira Kurosawa Jumper, 9.1 x 12.6 inches, pencil and Chinese white on red carton, 2022

This drawing is a medium faithful copy of an original which the artist produced in their early prime, probably around the year 1994. It is an effort to reproduce ancient charms in place of new inspirations. This reproduction was made from an old low-quality photocopy of the presumably lost original. It features a Caucasian male in front of a large library or university canteen window overlooking a Japanese garden, wearing a designer pullover (fashion statement) inspired by one worn by Akira Kurosawa on the occasion of one of his latest interviews, probably in the early 1990’s. It is drawn with mechanical pencil on the back of a French Exacompta folder in an exquisitely elegant warm red tone. Some highlights where added to the shrine and tree in the upper left corner. Grease marks will fade over time, while fold creases are original property of the medium and will remain.

Drawing and text © 2052 by Torsten Slama and the SHY Laboratory Group

Three Dwelling Houses

December 5, 2021

House for Hunter, art by Torsten Slama
The “The Most Dangerous Game” House, 29,8 x 21,5 cm, pencil and crayon on tone paper, 2019

This, the “The Most Dangerous Game” house, is a lodge for a special kind of hunter, a bearded one, who hunts the most crafty, murderous, cruel animal: the human animal. Which is the only animal with ethics and moral judgment, thus capable of revenge, not humble. Instead of fangs and claws, it has intelligence. Thus, it is the most dangerous game to hunt. The hunter type to take residence in this house has a taste for Eastern European low density dwelling architecture. The actual depicted setting is generic. A type of less dangerous game, a Bruderus Horten Noncaudatus, a flying wing-type ancient animal with an especially small brain, is flying by, unmolested. It is unclear whether the hunter is presently at home.

“Judge Dee” Country House in Carboniferous Setting, 31.5 x 23.5 cm, pencil and crayon on tone paper, 2019

This is a retreat-type home for the more benign, less damaging to the social fabric kind of hunter, the hunter for peace, quiet and solitude which he/she/it finds ideally represented in a dwelling detached from civilization by a certain distance in the fourth dimension. Thus, the person for this country home must be a time traveller to take leave from all that binds them in the now and find what they seek in a geological space and time which gave birth to all fossile fuel reserves which now fire our unpeaceful modern world, the carboniferous era.

The Abductionist’s House, pencil, pastel on tone paper, 29,7 x 21 cm, 2019

This house offers shelter for a very special kind of lover of humans, the abductionist, the John Fowlesian Collector-type. These are mostly male, for certain reasons which are difficult to specify or elucidate or trace back to either evolutionary or civilizational reasons. The collector traps another hapless human being (like the spider the fly in the parlour with the fine edgings), and keeps this hostage-type specimen under lock and key, for fear of abandonment and in the hope of by keeping this other stationary they could by pervasive and tenacious persuasion win reciprocal love. This person, as the chimney smoke indicates, and by general habit, home. The victim lives probably in the cellar. Two dogs are in a playful mood, but would alarm the house owner by raucous barking if anyone should approach. The house shares certain decorational and structural characteristics with the “The Most Dangerous Game” house, which indicates certain interesting psychological links between hunting and collecting.

For a different kind of author-approved viewing experience, you are invited to redirect here.

All depicted house studies © 2019/2037 by Torsten Slama and the TTS®

The Constitutionalist

August 22, 2018

The Constitutionalist, locomotive drawing by Torsten Slama, 2018Edw

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 Kraftick Liquefaction Plant

March 3, 2018

Coal Liquefaction Plant with cyclopean Landscape, drawing by Torsten Slama

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:

Kraftick Liquefaction Plant (by Torsten Slama), Detail   Detail of Kraftick Liquefaction Plant (by Torsten Slama)
Future © of this motor oil colorized drawing by Torsten Slama,the Energy Independence Society, and the NEPT yet undisclosed

Mannaheim Progressive Pro-Choice Clinic

December 7, 2016

Women's Medical Centre with earliest motor vehicle by Karl Benz, © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the International Pro-Brick Society

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

November 28, 2016

Country House with Hip Roof B8090 by Torsten Slama 2016

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

November 26, 2016

 Drawing of a school for problematic youths, staffed with progressive teachers, this drawing © Torsten Sama and the Progressive Society, 2021

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”

May 23, 2016

Kurt Hatlauf Gelsenkirchen Ückendorf Paul Gerhardt with 1903 Cadillac Runabout. This drawing ©2017 by Torsten Slama and the Pro America Society

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 Ziegler, Lepsiusstraße 112, Berlin-Steglitz

January 30, 2016

Haus Ziegler, Lepsiusstr 112, Berlin-Steglitz, with 1936 Opel Olympia, Architect Hugo Häring, 1936, this drawing ©2017 by Torsten Slama

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

Cologne St. John Baptist with 1901 Oldsmobile Runabout

October 11, 2015

St. John Baptist Church (Cologne) by Karl Band, 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)

September 28, 2015

Church Drawing by Torsten Slama

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

September 23, 2015

Anti-Nationalistic Village Church Feetze, Altmark Salzwedel District with 1923 BMW R32 Motorbike

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

September 21, 2015

Souvenir card, A4, on the basis of the drawing

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

March 25, 2015

 Pauluskirche, Schwenningen (1910), Architekt Martin Elsässer, with eearly BMW Motorbike, Drawing ©2017 by Torsten Slama

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

July 8, 2014

The Friendly Inspector, or, the Critical Commissioner

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.

House for the Successful Magician’s Third Spouse

October 25, 2013

Casa per la terza moglie del mago di successo © Torsten Slama e La Fondazione Domestica

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

World Wide Instrumentation Centre with 1912 Packard Landaulet

March 9, 2013

World Wide Instrumentation Centre for the Betterment of Mankind According to Tellurian Principles © 2021 by The Instrumentalists, Dr. Hecate Ecdysone, Torsten Slama

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

January 10, 2013

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

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”

January 8, 2013

Multi Purpose Centre "Sindelfingen", 2012, Oil on canvas, 40,3 x 53,3 cm © 2021 by Torsten Slama and The Illusionist Society

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

November 18, 2012

A retreat 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

September 24, 2012

Drawing of a 19th century farm house in Furtwangen, Schönenbach/Schwarzwald with modern sculpture made from gold plated square tubing in the foreground.

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”

May 22, 2012

A city church for medium sized towns located beyond metropolitan regions in Europe

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