February 21, 2008
Angel of the Odd
Currently showing at Found, Stephen Tompkins and I were talking a lot about Poe before the show’s opening, particularly a short story I hadn’t read until then. It informs a lot of Stephen’s work and, particularly, his new work ‘Transmogrifications.’
Quoth Tompkins:
Part of my Masters thesis back in the 90s was studying schizophrenia through semiotics and phenomenological methods - (you can see why I left grad school) It wasn’t the most popular subject for analytic philosophers.
There are many ideas in the story Angel of the Odd about the difference between hallucination and reality - and belief in one’s hallucination as reality - i.e. having a conversation with this odd character - where one’s figments take hold and take on a life of their own…
The last line of the story “Und you pelief, ten…at te last? You pelief, ten, in te possibility of te odd?” acted as an epigraph for the show that phrases a question.
Transmogrifications is open through Feb. 28.
