“Psychotel: Generating Uncanny Representations Through Research-informed, Affect-led Film Production”

Psychotel, a full-length essay film and practical component of a creative practice Ph.D., takes the hotel as a metaphor for the psyche. By drawing on examples of the uncanny from the supernatural horror genre, philosophical accounts of the uncanny, short narratives, and visual experiments, the film presents an audio-visual description of the uncanny from an interdisciplinary perspective. The film was made through a process of spontaneous and affect-led production. Academic concepts of the uncanny were allowed to permeate the creative process and influence the generation of representations aimed to instil sensations of uncanniness through a combination of mainstream tropes and experimental methods. The presentation draws upon Katherine Withy’s account of the uncanny in Heidegger’s Dasein. Withy’s commentary on the presencing and abscencing qualities of Dasein is reflected upon in relation to the production method of Psychotel and the creative process in general. An account of genre as grounded in affect is proposed with reference to Antonio Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis and leads to a new account of cinematic pleasure in which the uncanny is framed as a hypothetical vehicle to rehearse novel experiences. In conclusion, the affect-led process of creative practice and the philosophical and neuroscientific accounts of unconscious and nonconscious motivations are considered in the light of the Freudian account of the uncanny as the return of the repressed. This presentation will accompanied by short extracts of the film Psychotel.