Legending in a Minor Key: Notes on Angela Su's ''Lauren O—The Greatest Levitator in the Polyhedric Cosmos of Time''

Legending in a Minor Key: Notes on Angela Su's ''Lauren O—The Greatest Levitator in the Polyhedric Cosmos of Time''

IN“Mythology and Science Fiction,”author Thomas Disch notes that“the structures of mythology”(21) are used to make sense of the new. To Disch,“myths are everywhere in literature, but especially in science fiction”(22). The convergence of the oldest form of storytelling with what has yet to come seems unlikely. However, Disch suggests that science fiction (SF), like“myths aim at maximizing meaning, at compressing truth to the highest density”(22). In this sense, the SF writer is a mythmaker who aims to humanise the technological near future. Myths in turn structure present imaginings of what is possible. Through a sustained contestation of Enlightenment Humanist myths of what it means to be human, Hong Kong artist Angela Su reveals their problematics by creating counter-myths of what the body can do.