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Uncanny Media: the dark side of media
This binary history of Utrecht exemplifies what Freud in his seminal 1919 article on the repressed side of the human subconscious called ‘the uncanny’: an encounter with something that is familiar yet simultaneously unfamiliar, which can create a cognitive dissonance resulting in intense anxiety. Although the concept was originally conceptualized for psychoanalysis, its application in Media Studies seems tempting as many aspects of our daily media use embody such conflicting oppositions between fears and desires, acceptance and apprehension. As this dark side of mediation has only rarely been studied with academic scrutiny, the Uncanny Media conference, appropriately held in Utrecht from the 7th until the 9th of August, sought to amend this, with lectures covering subjects ranging from the eighteenth century until Modernity and from classical music to the internet. BLIK leaped at the opportunity to publish the most fascinating lectures presented at the conference in its Uncanny Media theme issue.
In the opening interview BLIK explores with conference initiator Isabella van Elferen the dark side of the human subconscious and determines that the uncanny is not about making choices between fears and desires but about what lies in between. Similarly, our article selection has not been dominated by a categorical distinction between discourses but exemplifies the conference’s wide variety of opinions and subjects. The contributions by Ilona van de Bildt, Guy Edmonds and Renee T. Coulombe focus on the mediatic afterlife, looking in turn at lingering online presence, the film archivist as a necromancer, and the haunting voices of the past. On the other hand, Imar de Vries and Alexander Schwinghammer turn their attention to the living in their respective investigations of the uncanny mediation experiences brought on by mobile telephony and blurry images. Traces of all five subjects can be found in our central interview with Gothic scholar Steven Bruhm, perhaps proving that while the articles in this issue of BLIK all cover the uncanny from different perspectives, they have in common an awareness of the importance of medial representation for the acknowledgement of repressed fears and desires in our own subconscious.
Redactie, Nieuws, 21-11-2008 om 08:55
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