Fright Club

Fright Club, on London's South Bank.

Pointer magazine advert

"Dismembered limbs, a severed head, a hand cut off at the wrist, as in a fairy tale of Hauff's, feet which dance by themselves, ... all these have something peculiarly uncanny about them, especially when, as in the last instance, they prove capable of independent activity in addition. As we already know, this kind of uncanniness springs from its proximity to the castration complex."

Freud p.244 The Uncanny

The Unheimlich exhibition video

Click above for a video of The Unheimlich exhibition which opened at Leeds Met Gallery on 17 April, and runs until 17 May 2008.

Nightmares in a Damaged Brain

A still from Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (1981) directed by Romano Scavolini.

Bleeding Eye

African Union troops arrest an Anjouan man after firing rockets into his house. This image appeared in The Guardian, 26 March 2008.

'[The Sandman is] a wicked man who comes when children
won't go to bed, and throws handfuls of sand in their eyes so
that they jump out of their heads all bleeding.'
E.T.A. Hoffman 1816 The Sandman

We know from psycho-analytic experience, however, that the
fear of damaging or losing one's eyes is a terrible one in
children. Many adults retain their apprehensiveness in this
respect, and no physical injury is so much dreaded by them as
an injury to the eye. [...] A study of dreams, phantasies and
myths has taught as that anxiety about one's eyes, the fear of
going blind, is often enough a substitute for the dread of being castrated.
Sigmund Freud 1919 The Uncanny

Mugabe Mask

Children play with a mask of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe capital Harare. This image appeared in The Metro, 1 April 2008.