PAST TALKS + EXHIBITS with video links

33
PRS Salon Group Exhibition, Hansell Gallery
On View: September 2nd - 30th, 2023

Devon Deimler. Janus Ghost (first draft), 2023. Unfinished clay.

The inaugural PRS Salon exhibiting 33 distinct works by PRS staff, contributors and volunteers. This group exhibition will be on display from Saturday, September 2nd to Saturday, September 30th at the Hansell Gallery.

Featuring works by: Alexandra Burden, Amanda Brass, Amanda Maciel Antunes, Anthony Cozzi, Brooke Brenton, David Orr, Devon Deimler, Dillan Conniff, Edgar Fabián Frías, Eliza Swann, Elizabeth Gill Lui, Elizabeth T. Vazquez, earpediem, Fahad Siadat, Kai Sugiyama, Kristen Phillips, Michael Dorsey, Sara Alessandrini, Stephen Reedy, Taylor Johnson, theatre dybbuk, Tiensirin Tienngern, Victoria Kraus

Curated by: Michael Dorsey, dama, Kelly Carmena, Amanda Brass, and Liz Vazquez

“Rocks in Our Heads”

Curators’ talk for Feeding the Unseen: Remediations of Earth, with co-curator Heidi Gustafson

Yuri Shimojo, *Rudy Blue Unbroken Line (for Jason),* 2022

Feeding the Unseen: Remediations of Earth

Exhibit co-curated by Heidi Gustafson and Devon Deimler

June 3-July 30, 2023 @ the Philosophical Research Society

Spiritually-charged rocks, soil, metal, and pigment. Intimate acts of alchemy. Renewed cultural practices. Remediations of earth with earth. Elemental magic. The artists of Feeding the Unseen critically engage the metamorphic gravity of living on a mortal planet.

Works by: Camas Logue, Sarah Hudson, Valerie Piraino, Onya McCausland, Charles Simonds and Rudy Burckhardt, Yuri Shimojo and Jason Logan, Kelley O’Leary, Morgan Williams, Treasure of Abundance, Alana Siegel, Maru García, Marilú Ríos Guerrero, Heidi Gustafson, Thomas Little and Dylan Kehde Roeloefs, Tilke Elkins and Wild Pigment Project, Charles Deimler, Corwin Fergus.

Hybrid Moments: Myths of Crisis, Metamorphosis, and Aesthetic Survival

December 13, 2022 @ the Philosophical Research Society Watch via PRS

Myth and folklore are known for their hybrid creatures—minotaurs, mermaids, sphinx, and satyrs—as well as bizarre transformations between gods and animals, humans and objects, angels and monsters, underlings and kings. These strange fascinations are not only wonders of the imagination but look-alive images of emotional truth. Metamorphic myths portray the necessity of metaphorical and bodily change during moments of crisis—when survival is a matter of changing form.

This presentation dwells on feminine figures who become trees (Daphne) or birds (Nyctimene, Cornix) to escape sexual violation; the transfiguration of trauma into objects like ceiling fans and tin machines (Twin Peaks); and how real-world drastic times call for drastic measures—and drastic myths.

Ultraviolet Concrete! Dionysos and the Ecstatic Play of Aesthetic Experience

June 25, 2019 @ the Philosophical Research Society

Watch via PRS

MORE TALKS

“The Double-Door of Dionysos & Ariadne’s Ecstatic Lament” @ Morbid Anatomy. Class for Morbid Anatomy series, Ambivalent, Chthonic, and Infernal: Dark Deities of Abundance and Destruction. July 27, 2023.

“Hybrid Moments: Feminine Myths of Crisis, Metamorphosis, and Aesthetic Survival.” Live online talk for Morbid Anatomy, May 22, 2023 ~ revamped version of PRS talk, December 2022

“The Owls Howl at Midnight: From Midnight Movies to Twin Peaks’ Return as Ultimate-Reality TV” @ online Mythologium Conference, August 2, 2020

“Strange Fascinations: James Hillman, the Art of Contemporary Myth & Myths of Contemporary Art.” @ OPUS Archives & Research Center. April 2020 ~ cancelled due to covid.

“Dionysos, Dennis Hopper & the Ecstatic Play of Aesthetic Experience” @ Art & Psyche Conference, UCSB. April 6, 2019

“Dionysos: Otherworldly God of Revealing and Re-Veiling” @ the International Association for Comparative Mythology Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland. June 9, 2017.

“The Everyday Ecstatic God-Man: Dionysos and Dennis Hopper” @ the Popular Culture Association Conference, Seattle, WA. March 22, 2016.

CV for all.

CINEMYTH SCREENING SERIES

Screening / film clip presentation + discussion series curated for the Philosophical Research Society.

Cinemyth was a screening series for taking in and seeking out the mythic dimensions of cinema. Films are wisdom texts of sound and vision, full of mythic truths told slant and the creation of aesthetic worlds. They engage the perennial themes of life and the unique conditions of their subjects. In the right hands, they question prevailing cultural mythologies and create fully new myths and icons in their own right. In a sense, to think mythically is to think in genre. As such, each Cinemyth series was curated according to a specific sub-genre.