Welcome to
The Stranger Modules.
Over the years,
The Stranger Modules has developed as a fractal bestiary, an experiment in abstract narrative, and a toy to play with. The idea of showing a world through its creatures is an interest that can be traced back to the nostalgic, middle-school memories of leafing through the monster manual for a role-playing game – creating larger narratives from the descriptions alone, allowing the greater world to take shape almost subconsciously.
A concept I find myself returning to in my work is the idea of "systems and their deformations". In this way, the many layers of structure (such as the strangers' nomenclature, numbering, or classes, among others) allow for a wide variance of permutation, with each new module further introducing new frameworks by which to classify, distort, and contextualize the strangers – to say nothing of destroying, erasing, and reinterpreting the designs. My goal in this regard has been to quickly establish a simple visual pattern that sets the strangers apart from any particular organism, while still maintaining a form that would make any three identifiable as belonging to the same "family" (three being the smallest number needed to either break or establish a pattern).
The Stranger Modules has also acted as a vehicle for my own feelings of estrangement, fear, and social anxiety. I think that maybe we can all understand the experience of being an outsider in a system, the rules of which we were never informed...and being forced to negotiate with individuals that may be threatening, or even dangerous. I hope that some of the themes in
The Stranger Modules resonates with you in this regard. Perhaps, you can even enjoy using strangers in your own daydreams as a way to think about systems and their deformation. And I encourage you to freely make your own strangers, or use these modules as imaginary toys in any ways that are beneficial to you.
Above all, please follow your dreams and enjoy the process of what you create.
— Felix Kramer