"Now and then, a mysterious life and potency will flicker out of an artwork and confront you." So began "Artworks Are People Too," a talk Phil presented at the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute earlier this summer. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss the implications of this idea that some artworks break the mould of the inanimate and act as persons in the world. Are artworks mere creations, or creatures too?

To enroll in Questionable Cinema, our live summer series happening in August 2026, visit Weirdosphere.

Music: "Hypnagogic," from Weird Studies Vol. 3.

References

Henri Corbin,  Alone with the Alone

Alfred Hallowell, "Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and Worldview"

Martin Buber, I and Thou

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age

Rainer Maria Rilke, “Archaic Torso of Apollo”

Peter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life

Carl Jung, “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry”

Alejandro Jodorowsky, Pyschomagic 

Dan Sperber, “The Causal Chains of Culture”

Paul Stoller, In Sorcery’s Shadow

Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo

Holly Cusack-McVeigh, Stories Find You

Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind

Ikea lamp commercial

Sam Raimi (dir.), Evil Dead II

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