🏴I have described the uncanny here before in the imaginary scenario in which I am teaching, and the classroom door opens and another version of me enters the room to look at me teaching. That is kinda uncanny, but what could make it uncannier is when I look at you, the students, looking at the other me looking at me teaching. This is what Jacques Lacan sums up as: “I see myself seeing myself.” But there is another uncanny (unhemlich) — Enter Gregor Schneider.

In the 1980s Gregor started to build rooms within rooms in his family home. He videotaped the results which bled into the artworld such as at the Venice Biennale. But those doubles were just replicas of the very personal and strange warren that to this day, continues to be transformed back in Germany.

Gregor is more of a Freudian than a Lacanian due to his uncanny being tied to the home. So Gregor has been clicking his heels 👠 for over 30 years to construct a space that may come across as strange and even terrifying — the uncanny being a type of terrifying in Freud’s words — for anyone but Gregor.

I remember Thomas Demand, who was in the same class as Gregor in art school (what an alumni), who said at IMMA that Gregor was strange, and he didn’t like him. An artist lecturer from my art school days said when I brought him up as an influence: “Thank god he found art.” During COVID Gregor appeared in a Zoom call sitting in his family home, chatting how, even though his artworld globetrotting was on pause, he rather liked being back home. He looked happy. “There’s no place like home”🏴