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A+RC Public Lecture by Dr. Alexandra Kokoli: The Feminist Uncanny as Party Crasher
In an illustrated lecture introducing the ‘feminist uncanny’, Alexandra Kokoli investigates the deeply flawed yet influential concept of the uncanny through the lens of feminist theory and contemporary art practice. Not merely a subversive strategy but a cipher for the fraught yet productive dialogue between feminism and psychoanalysis, the uncanny makes an ideal vehicle for the aggressive defamiliarization of the familiar and familial, and acts as a constant reminder that feminism and psychoanalysis are never quite at home with one another.
Translated verbatim from the German unheimliche as ‘unhomely’, the uncanny inflects a range of art practices that grapple with, resist, and campaign against patriarchal regimes of social reproduction. Approached as irreverent genrefuck, the feminist uncanny in art practice contaminates history with story-telling and revolutionary world-making and boldly repurposes established genres as intersectional feminist critique. In addition to a wide range of examples from art informed by and committed to feminism, we will focus on Lorraine O’Grady performances as a black feminist killjoy, crashing private views and calling out the whiteness and sexism of the artworld.
About Dr. Alexandra Kokoli
Dr. Alexandra Kokoli researches feminist artistic and activist practices. She works as Associate Professor in Visual Culture at Middlesex University and Senior Research Associate at VIAD, University of Johannesburg. She has published widely, including the edited collections Feminism Reframed; Susan Hiller: The Provisional Texture of Reality; (co-ed with Deborah Cherry), Art into Life: Essays on Tracey Emin; and the monograph The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice. She co-leads the Transnational Early Career Research Network (TECReN) in Visual and Performing Arts, funded by the British Academy. Her research on the women’s peace camp at Greenham Common has been supported by the Paul Mellon Centre and the Leverhulme Trust.