“… it is not so much darkness itself (whatever that might be), but the process of ceasing to be dark, the process of revelation or bringing to light, that is uncanny… the uncanny seems (at least for Freud) to involve a special emphasis on the visual, on what comes to light, on what is revealed to the eye. The uncanny is what comes out of the darkness.”
(Nicholas Royle)
This short film is part of a long-term exploration inspired by Freud’s essay “The Uncanny”.
This particular project explores one of Freud’s ideas that the unheimliche (uncanny) is something that should remain hidden, but that which suddenly becomes public – the canny (homeliness) becomes something that is uncanny (unhomely or unheimlich).
Through photographic stills, moving image and audio, the unheimlich is explored through the remnants of domestic space, layering expressions of the unheimlich with metaphorical and psychological representations of the pig-man allegory in George Orwell’s book, Animal Farm.
The film piece is a large wall projection with audio listened to through headphones.