Institute of Contemporary Art Miami ICA Miami

This fall virtual Art + Research Center Program is grounded in the Freudian concept of the uncanny, or, that which is both strange and familiar, and how it has been integral to a discussion of contemporary art. As part of this seminar, we are interested in both the historic and theoretical understandings of Freud’s canonical essay, as well as contemporary explorations of the term across contemporary art, feminist theory, and technologies from deep fakes to AI. The uncanny is a term that is often used in the art world, to describe works of art that are strange, haunted, or surreal. The uncanny is also an experience that is tied to the aesthetic and digital realm and intimately connected to the question and experience of foreignness through experiences of migration, exile, queerness, and other experiences of living on the margin. Thinking across various iterations of the uncanny from the past to the present, this seminar will cut across questions of the occult, haunting, psychic affliction, digital media, and probe how the uncanny is fundamentally tied to the aesthetic.