THE UNCANNY. As collaboratively defined by Sigmund Freud, Mike Kelley, Hal Foster and Christoph Grunenberg, the uncanny is a moment where something familiar is estranged. The realization itself of that shift is the uncanny moment. The uncanny is linked to fear and cognitive dissonance, and it is a faculty of the imagination. Freud discusses the uncanny in fiction through moments when the inanimate becomes animated, when the humanity of an object or a situation is uncertain. Mike Kelley contributes an aethetics dimention to the study through his interpretation of the uncanny in figuarive sculpture and the repetition-complusion impulse that drives his 1992 exhibition entitled “the Uncanny”. The word “canny” originates from a Scottish term to know, or knowing.
“The uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar.” -- Freud.
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