~ UPCOMING EVENTS

THE SPIRAL UNIVERSE BY MADAM X: ARTIST TALK WITH MADAM X, dama, AND DEVON DEIMLER

at THE PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH SOCIETY, LOS ANGELES

Sunday April 13, 2025 @ 2:00pm PST

From PRS: Please join us for a special presentation and discussion with artist MADAMX. She will be joined by writer, mythologist, and artist Devon Deimler, PhD; and artist, PRS librarian and curator dama. The conversation will lead us into the 30+ years of exceptional work from MADAMX’s solo exhibition at PRS The Spiral Universe. Providing a forum to learn more about the symbolic language in this artist’s work, while examining both spiritual and esoteric references from a variety of perspectives.

About the exhibition:

The Spiral Universe by Madam X is a solo exhibition at The Philosophical Research Society that captures a unique connection between our relationship with time and timelessness. Madam X’s work draws from a call to be with the unknown realms of Eternal History,* and she describes her encounter with a purpose in revealing a timeless dimension. Her compositions of space, time and matter guide us into the spiral forms in nature and the metaphysical paths of our subconscious mind. The exhibition is a collection of some of Madam X’s early work in relation to her recent practice developed over a few decades. The Spiral Universe invites you to be present with divine mysteries, a foretelling of or from the nature of things to come and things present. A place where image melds with the written word for its visibility in knowing the intrinsicality of all creatures and their occult virtues. Madam X’s approach to language and image offers a deep understanding of exoteric and esoteric nature. Her labyrinthian diagrams and thoughts reflect on humankind as a journey which passes all states of transmutation from the physical to the celestial body. In this mirror of art and spirit we find a re-evaluation of what it means to be human at present, and to witness her work is to reckon with these responsibilities in our time.

*“Each time the energy completes a revolution around the sphere it moves into another sphere and passes around it. And as these spheres accumulate they inscribe a Spiral of Time and Form growing in the order and integration of design.”

- Eternal History

Artist’s bio:

“Nothing is known about Madam X.”

A SMILE THAT MAKES FOREVER: A MEMENTO MORI OF TEETH

ONLINE TALK for MORBID ANATOMY

Monday May 19, 2025 @ 7:00pm EST/4:00pm PST

Tickets and more info via Morbid Anatomy

This talk is an expanded version of an original iteration delivered at Morbid Anatomy’s 2024 Memento Mori Festival.

With each gnash, smile, or showing of teeth, the human skeleton peeks through. Death, in this way, is not only out and about in the world of the living, but serves, through the teeth, as a vital social mediator and curious survival tool. This illustrated talk plays with the poetics and phenomenology of teeth via their appearances in science, art, myth, dental objects, dreams, pop culture, and cinema (including Twin Peaks and the Smile horror franchise). We will consider the psychological range, cultural conditionings, and aesthetic practices surrounding teeth, from the multileveled demand for teeth whitening, to mores against open-mouthed beaming, to archetypes of sardonic revenge and full-blown Cheshire grins. We will contemplate the setting of teeth in the same mouth-world that speaks and digests, and how the lips (with the eyes and other agents) shape a wide variety of existential messages and moods: bestowing love, promising death, seducing power, mocking authority, cherishing the moment, or even swallowing us into other dimensions. All along, we will entertain toothsome smiles as biting, ready-made memento mori and flashes of n/evermore in the everyday. Smile!

Image: Washington's Teeth, Jeff Dundas, 2025

PAST EVENTS ~

ARIADNE IN THREADS: HEARTBREAK, LAMENT, AND THE ARRIVAL OF TRUE LOVE ONLINE TALK for MORBID ANATOMY

Tuesday March 4, 2025 @ 7:00pm (EST)/4:00PM (PST)

Tickets & more info via Morbid Anatomy

When Theseus enters the labyrinth to slay the Minotaur, Ariadne provides the thread that leads him back to daylight. For this, Theseus promises to marry smitten Ariadne and whisk her away to Athens. But midway through their journey, Ariadne is abandoned while slumbering on the beach. Waking to the sight of Theseus’ sails in the distance shocks and rends Ariadne into an outpouring of lament, a scene captured painstakingly across literature, art, and music. And yet, this lament is ultimately a song attracting the heart of Dionysos. Unlikely as it may seem for the god of uninhibited sexuality and transgression of norms, the marriage of Dionysos and Ariadne is the sole loyal union on Olympos. Then again, there is no one version of any myth. In this illustrated talk, we will look deeply at the devastation of heartbreak and the ecstatic arrival of true love as mythically entwined.

In this illustrated talk, we will look deeply at the devastation of heartbreak and the ecstatic arrival of true love as mythically entwined. Throughout, we will entertain multimedia versions and interpretations of the myth. Ariadne’s laments and her fate with Dionysos vary intensely across sources, even while themes of trauma and transformation archetypally repeat. Was Ariadne abandoned, or was her sleep a ruse to absolve herself of Theseus? Did her tears draw the chariot of Dionysos or had the god already driven the hero away? Can this new love thrive in the heavens or will it return to the dark mazes in which it began? Yes and yes and yes.

This talk previews a portion of an upcoming class for Morbid Anatomy on myths of metamorphosis, radical transformations of embodiment, disembodiment, and hybridization across Greco-Roman mythology and myths of pop culture.

PAST TALKS + EXHIBITS with video links

“A SMILE THAT MAKES FOREVER”: A MEMENTO MORI OF TEETH for MORBID ANATOMY’S MEMENTO MORI FESTIVAL @ the PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH SOCIETY, LA

September 7, 2024, 3:30pm

With each gnash, smile, or showing of teeth, the human skeleton peeks through. This illustrated talk presents examples from art, myth, and dreams to play with the poetics and phenomenology of teeth and toothsome smiles as biting ready-made memento mori of the everyday.

Bound & Infinity
PRS Salon Group Exhibition, Hansell Gallery
On View: September 21 - October 19, 2024 —- More info

Devon Deimler. Mutatas Formas: Bathroom Window, 2024. Photo collage.

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.