Doldrums: On the Uncanny Domestic

This essay was written by Elise Schierbeek to accompany the VDB TV online program, Doldrums: On the Uncanny Domestic. 

Taking a cue from the evocative title of Stephanie Barber’s The Hunch that Caused the Winning Streak and Fought the Doldrums Mightily, this 70-minute program drifts through six works that rest on a sense of dread and eeriness within the home and suburban domesticity. Through varying modes, each work in turn deals with a rupture of "the doldrums." Oftentimes this takes the form of revealed contradictions – a haunting within the comfortable, an instability within order. Works by Stephanie Barber, Cam Archer, Bob Snyder, Frédéric Moffet, Cecilia Condit, and Michael Robinson are included. 

Elise's accompanying essay explores the relationship of the program to the concept of the uncanny and its psychoanalytical origins in ideas of home and video.