DESCRIPTION: What are the thousand typologies of fear? Is fear a primordial problem of consciousness; does it rest in the realms of perception, sensation, psyche, imagination; or does it emanate from the outer atmosphere as a kind of spatial mood? In this Seminar, we will explore both those supposed universal categories of phobia (fear of heights, needles, insects, confined spaces) and their corresponding nightmares (dreams of falling, drowning, being chased), while also studying the possibility of new fright-modes that expand the boundaries of dread, horror, terror, paranoia, etc.
Our primary resource and method throughout this Seminar are conspiracy theories. Students will generate their own original archive by seeking out the strangest conspiracy theories in circulation today (secret societies, online demons, alien invasion, doomsday scenarios), decoding their implications, and thereby allowing us to ask a final question about the transforming horizon of fear and technology in an age of virtuality, holograms, and metaverses.
Session 1: Things Are Not What They Seem (fear of objects, phenomena, plagues)
Session 2: They Are Coming For Us (fear of the hidden, the powerful, the intruder)
Session 3: The End Nears (fear of dystopia, catastrophe, apocalypse)
Session 4: The Machine Will Devour All (fear of the artificial, the digital, the simulated)
IMAGE: Annette Messager, My Vows 1988-91.
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