on harems

I'm currently reading the catalogue of the Uncanny exhibition curated by Mike Kelley. Most of the objects and images in the exhibition are humanoid unions of the erotic and the grotesque. According to Freud, the Uncanny is defined by an eruption of repressed emotions and impulses. Dolls, mannequins, prosthetics, and automata are uncanny because they are both familiar and other. Being inanimate and figurative, they awaken a knowledge of mortality and sexuality we normally suppress.


I was interested to find that Kelley had also included a number of his personal collections in the exhibition. He calls these collections "Harems," a term used to describe a fetishist's accumulation of like objects. He writes, "The uncontrollable impulse to collect and order is itself uncanny." I don't get an uncanny sensation looking at these works, but I can see how Kelley might. It is disturbing to find oneself repeating the same unconscious behaviors.


"Collecting has been described as a form of 'doubling.' Through the amassing of identical or similar objects, the collector attempts to cheat death . . . the collector's inability to stop collecting, to stop pursuing similar or related objects, is a further manifestation of unrecognized and hidden motifs"
From Christoph Grunberg "Life in a Dead Circus: The Spectacle of the Real"