Internal Combustion (Twentysix Gasoline Stations)

Internal Combustion TWENTYSIX GASOLINE STATIONS

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INTERNAL COMBUSTION (TWENTYSIX GASOLINE STATIONS)

Internal Combustion (Twentysix Gasoline Stations) CONTACT mail@janfreuchen.org www.janfreuchen.org DESIGN & LAYOUT Jan Freuchen COVER Internal Combustion by Jan Freuchen PRINT Chroma, Poland Cover: 300g Glossy Gothic Art Inside: 120g Glossy Gothic Art

INTERNAL COMBUSTION (TWENTYSIX GASOLINE STATIONS)

BY JAN FREUCHEN

BERLIN 2006

DETAIL FROM WINTER LANDSCAPE WITH A BIRD TRAP BY PIETER BRUEGEL

TWENTYSIX GASOLINE STATIONS(1)

INTERNAL COMBUSTION

THE EYE OF HURRICANE ISABEL, 2003

WHEEL

FOSSILIZED TRAIL FROM THE CLIMATICHNITES OF THE CAMBRIAN ERA(2)

A HEAP OF LANGUAGE (AFTER ROBERT SMITHSON)

VULCANIC DUST COATING

17” RAM 1500 ALUMINUM CHROME RIMS

FROZEN TRACKS

LIMITLESS FREEDOM - ADVERTISEMENT ON THE FASADE OF THE STUDIO IN CHAUSSESTRASSE

LIMITLESS FREEDOM - ADVERTISEMENT ON THE FASADE OF THE STUDIO IN CHAUSSESTRASSE, SEEN FROM THE INSIDE

FERRARI DELEGATION VISITING ROME FOR A SPECIAL AUDIENCE WITH THE 84-YEAR-OLD POPE JOHN PAUL II IN 2005

TYRE FLIPPING

THE RAGING BULL

STANDARD GEOLOGICAL TIME SCALE WITH EXTENDED LINE

THE ENLIGHTENED PUBLIC SPHERE

FROM APOCALYPSE FOCUS GROUP BY JAN FREUCHEN AND TUE GREENFORT(3)

UTOPIAN OIL TOWER

APOCALYPTIC LANDSCAPE REWORKED BY DOG(4)

APOCALYPTIC LANDSCAPE REWORKED BY DOG(4)

DOG REWORKING APOCALYPTIC LANDSCAPE

APOCALYPTIC LANDSCAPE REWORKED BY DOG(4)

THE LIBERATION SOCIETY

EMBLEM(5)

FROM APOCALYPSE FOCUS GROUP, BY JAN FREUCHEN AND TUE GREENFORT(3)

FROM APOCALYPSE FOCUS GROUP, BY JAN FREUCHEN AND TUE GREENFORT(3)

THE CARBON WEB(6)

SKULL AND BALLS

LORD JIM CONSULTING

NOKIA BIRD(7)

CEO (CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER)

AILING FATHER FAILES TO RECOGNIZE HIS SON AFTER 50 YEARS OF SEPARATION(8)

MARTIN BORMANN SUPER SERVICE MEDUSA RAFT

HELP - THE STOMACH LOOKS LIKE E.T.!(9)

TERJE LARSEN AKA. THE WANDERER(10)

ICARONYCTERIS AND TWO SHOVELS

EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH

DISCARDED MODERNIST SCULPTURE

EAGLE, LUNAR MODULE FROM THE APOLLO 11 MISSION, REVELL MODEL

POSTER FOR THE EXHIBITION PIMP MY RIDE BY JAN FREUCHEN & LUTZ-RAINER MÜLLER

OBJET TROUVÉ(11)

THE SCULPTURE IS CUT INTO PIECES

Baßdorf

Research Center

BAßDORF RESEARCH CENTER(12)

HOME AND AWAY(13)

1

by Jan Freuchen

SHELTER A simple shelter is constructed by lifting a plane surface diagonally so that one side rests on the ground while the other is held up by a vertical, a stick. Attach a piece of meat to the stick and increase the weight of the diagonal roof, and it becomes a trap. Firmly fasten the stick to the ground, tilt until horizontal and the plane becomes a table, forming a T; a shape recognizable to 20th century humans as a place for the sale of fossil fuel.

THE CARBON WEB From the upper strata of the Earth’s crust decayed remains of prehistoric marine animals and terrestrial plants are dug up and released into the atmosphere via carbon fuelled machines, causing temperatures to rise and hurricanes to destroy the functional buildings along the paved roads of distilled crude oil between the cities.(14) INTERNAL COMBUSTION Groups of people gather around the cloth covered metallic transportation units upon the podiums, like scientists getting ready to unveil previously unknown anatomical functions of a body. Released notes and promotional photos enter the global information webs, where they are reproduced, analyzed and digested by retailers, commentators and consumers for an intense but brief moment. (To be read twice).

IMPOSSIBLE Every action is written into self affirming patterns of transaction. Sketches of lives can be reconstructed from the contents of one’s garbage can, filled with objects imprinted with the multitude of assigned numbers that allow us access to the global economy and vice versa.(15) LORD JIM CONSULTING Sparrows whistle corporate jingles in the parks of early May as human heads lean back on green lawns. Violins tremble in industrial culture compositions upon

electronic devices purchased as compensations for suppressed sexual desires.

Individuals embrace each other in an age where the care for the self is the highest virtue and the public sphere is an all encompassing focus group.

2

by miscellaneous

OBSERVING THE HABITAT (HISTORICAL) “O King, seems to me the present life of men on earth, in comparison with that time which to us is uncertain, as if when on a winter’s night you sit feasting with your ealdormen and thegns, - a single sparrow should fly swiftly into the hall, and coming in at one door, instantly fly out through another.”

The Venerable Bede (673 – 735, a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Wearmouth)

“A horrible tempest has condensed the sky, and showers and snows bring down the atmosphere: now the sea, now the woods bellow with the Thracian North wind.

Let us, my friends, take occasion from the day; and while our knees are vigorous, and it becomes us, let old age with his contracted forehead become smooth.”

Horace (65 BC - 8 BC, the leading lyric poet in Latin under protection of Maecenas), from ‘Epodes, Ode XIII’

1. Don’t throw rocks at a whirlwind. It will throw them back and chase you.

2. Don’t call whirlwinds a name. Evil Spirits will get you.

3. Don’t go into a whirlwind. It will affect your heart and carry you off. Dust devils are an evil wind that blows no one any good. They seem to be animated by evil spirits.

4. Don’t whistle or you will call up the wind!

Ernest Bulows, from ‘Traditional Navajo Taboos’

CONSTRUCTING THE HABITAT (MODERN UTOPIAN) “Watch the little gas station.... In our present gasoline service station you may see a crude beginning to such important advance decentralization; also see the beginning of the future humane establishment we are now calling the free city.

Wherever service stations are located naturally these so often ugly and seemingly insignificant features will survive and expand. [The new city]... is all around us in the haphazard making, the apparent forces to the contrary notwithstanding. All about us and no plan. The old order is breaking up” Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 – 1959, one of the most prominent and influential architects of the first half of the 20th century)

“Any store in a modern town, with its elegant windows all displaying useful and pleasing objects, is much more aesthetically enjoyable than all those passeist exhibitions which have been so lauded everywhere. An electric iron, its white steel gleaming clean as a whistle, delights the eye more than a nude statuette, stuck on a pedestal hideously tinted for the occasion. A typewriter is more architectural than all those building projects which win prizes at academies and competitions.

The windows of a perfumer’s shop, with little boxes and packets, bottles and futurcolor triplicate phials, reflected in the extremely elegant mirrors. The clever and gay modelling of ladies’ dancing-shoes, the bizarre ingenuity of multi-colored parasols.

Furs, travelling bags, china—these things are all a much more rewarding sight than the grimy little pictures nailed on the grey wall of the passéist painter’s studio.”

Giacomo Balla (1871 - 1958, was an Italian futurist painter), from ‘The Futurist Universe’

“The cave was the original dwelling. A hollow adobe pile was the first permanent house. To build meant to gather and mass material, allowing it to form empty cells for human shelter. (…) The man of the future does not try to escape the elements. He will rule them. / His home is no more a timid retreat: The earth has

become his home. / The concepts ‘comfortable’ and ‘homey’ change their meaning.

Atavistic security feelings fail to recommend conventional designs./ The comfort of a dwelling lies in its complete control of: space, climate, light, mood, within its confines./ The modern dwelling will not freeze temporary whims of owner or designer into permanent tiresome features./ It will be a quiet, flexible background for a harmonious life.”

Rudolf Michael Schindler (1887-1953, an Austrian-American architect who worked in Los Angeles during the mid-20th century) from his ‘Manifesto’ (1912)

CONTROLLING THE HABITAT (CONTEMPORARY DYSTOPIAN) “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. (...) In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons (...) who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

Edward Bernays (1891-1995, nephew to Sigmund Freud and the ‘father of public relations’) from ‘Propaganda’ (1928)

“The purpose of business is to do business. To make profitable investments, and to deliver competitive returns on behalf of our shareholders. That is a very simple purpose - clear and limited. Clearly, companies are part of society. We fulfil a specific role on behalf of society - creating wealth and meeting needs. But we’re not responsible for society. We have a single simple purpose.”

Sir John Browne (Group Chief Executive BP) from the speech ‘The Role of Corporate Leadership’ (2001)

“[A] well-known observations [is] that many of the participants in the sixties movements are now the executive motors of contemporary liberal capitalism, and that the demands for jouissance have been transformed into commercialised longing for the realization of pleasure in the contemporary western society of welfare. A consequence of such commercial and economical organization of happiness is namely that also politicalness itself has sort of disappeared from contemporary politics. Today, politics represents a way of systematization and transparency of the societies of late capitalism, where any revolt and permanent verification is transparently included in advance into the bureaucratic and multilayered re-organization of private interests. “ Bojana Kunst (Slovenian philosopher and contemporary art theoretician) from ’The Organization of Happiness and the Exhausted Body’ (2004)

EPILOGUE (WITH PIANO)

PIANO

BONES, FLESH, COATES

UNTITLED, PHOTO BY LINN ANITA PEDERSEN, 2005

PIANO

PIANO

WHILE WE WAIT(16)

MONKEY, SKULLS, CLOSET

ANDROGYNOUS FIGURE IN HALLWAY

PIANO

INTENTIONALLY BLANK PAGE

FOOTNOTES 1) The chapter is based on Ed Ruscha’s book Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962.

2) The Climactichnites appears to belong to an unnamed phylum that lived briefly on the vast tidal sand flats that existed in eastern North America around 500 million years ago. The fossil is known by its track ways once imprinted on bedding surfaces with ripple marks and mud cracks. Each track was 15 cm wide and marked by a chevron cross pattern repeated with almost machine-like regularity between crenulated marginal ridges - looking disturbingly like dirt-bike tire tracks. Although ultimately unsuccessful, the Climactichnites the trail in the sand records one early attempt to reach out from the sea to onto the land.

3) Apocalypse Focus Group is a project by Jan Freuchen and Tue Greenfort. For pictures of the exhobition at ALP galleri Peter Bermann, Stockholm, see http://www.alpgallery.com/ 4) Original drawings: Apocalyptic Landscape Reworked by Dog #1-4, ink on paper, each 70 x 100 cm, by Jan Freuchen 2006.

5) Original drawing: Emblem, ink on paper, 70 x 100 cm, by Jan Freuchen 2005.

6) Original drawing: The Carbon Web, ink and computer prints on paper, 100 x 70 cm, by Jan Freuchen 2006. The carbon web is a term used by the artist group Platform in therir research into the structure of the oil & gas corporation. See http:// www.carbonweb.org/carbonweb.htm 7) Original drawing: Nokia Bird, ink on paper, 70 x 100 cm, by Jan Freuchen 2005.

8) On august 15th, 2000, a North Korean plane landed in Seoul carrying 100 North Koreans to see their relatives across the great divide for the first time in half a century. As Lim Jae-Hyok, 66, met his ailing 91-year-old father who failed to recognise him, Mr Lim screamed in anguish. ‘’Daddy, your grandsons in North Korea want to see you, too. My heart is breaking. This might be my last bow,’’ he said, as he hurled himself on to the floor and lay sobbing.

9) The texts, taken from a norwegian magazine, reads ‘Help, the stomach looks like E.T.! - Is Arnold Swartzenegger lost in space?’.

10) Terje Larsen aka. “The Wanderer” has to this date been convicted of breaking in to more than 600 cabins in the mountians of southern Norway. He has been scentenced to prison on sevral occations, but continues to wander the mountains as soon as he is released. He looks for liquer, canned food and a shelter. Occationally he also shits on the floor.

11) Objet Trouvé, 2006, woodconstruction, 450 X 376 X 286 cm. From the exhibition ‘Pimp My Ride’ at West Germany, Berlin - a collaboration between Jan Freuchen and Lutz-Rainer Müller. Among the exhibited objects was a replica of the Eagle Lunar Module from the Apollo 11 mission fused with a grand piano, contructed in wood.

12) The Baßdorf Research Center is a sculpture park situated in Baßdorf, a town north of Berlin. The Baßdorf Research Center is a project by Jan Freuchen & Lutz-Rainer Müller.

13) Original sculpture: Home and Away, wood, plaster, acrylic paint, 175 x 110 x 70 cm, by Jan Freuchen 2005. Photo by Linn Anita Pedersen.

14) The connection between global warming and the tropical storms remains a controversial issue. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says in their Hurricane FAQ that “it is highly unlikely that global warming has (or will) contribute to a drastic change in the number or intensity of hurricanes.” While Kerry Emanuel, professor of meteorology at M.I.T. states in his

2005 artilce in Nature 436, 686–688, that the potential hurricane destructiveness, a measure which combines strength, duration, and frequency of hurricanes, “is highly correlated with tropical sea surface temperature, reflecting well-documented climate signals, including multidecadal oscillations in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, and global warming.” He further predicts “a substantial increase in hurricane-related losses in the twenty-first century”.

15) Based on Montana Supreme Court Justice James C. Nelson statement on the ruling whether the evidence contained within someone’s trash can be used against them in a court of law.

16) The note, issued during the last days of the German occupation of Norway during WWII, reads: “While we wait. Precautionary order No.2 from the Home Front:/ 1. Be aware of provocation./ 2. Do not drift around in the streets./ 3. Continue your daily work./ 4. Break the rumours./ The moto is:/ Dignity - Calm - Disiplin!”

ADDITIONAL REMARKS All photographs of the gasoline stations are collected from the web and reprinted in this book in slightly modified verisons.

Artwork by Jan Freuchen 2006, except where noted.

Contact: mail@janfreuchen.org Web: www.janfreuchen.org

THANKS TO Linn Anita Pedersen, Lutz-Rainer Müller, Michael Toke, Tue Greenfort, Ole Martin Lund Bø, Henrik Mykland, Christofforos Lazaridis, Marius Martinussen and Endre Aalrust.

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