There are easy ways to scare or shock an audience; monsters, jump scares, gore, blood, and violence are staples of many horror productions. But there are also works that attempt to follow the tradition of "weird fiction" started by authors like Arthur Machen („The Great God Pan“), Robert W. Chambers („The King in Yellow“) and Edgar Allan Poe („The Masque of the Red Death“), later defined by H.P. Lovecraft („At the Mountains of Madness“) and brought into the „New Weird“ by writers like Chine Miéville („Perdido Street Station“) and Jeff VanderMeer („Annihilation“). Those are a much more difficult proposition. In this elective, we will analyze media that deal with the weird in all its aspects. How is the ineffable represented in visual media? How do modern artists use technology to bring tales of the weird to life? Is it possible to capture the sense of the „unheimlich“ in game mechanics?
Participants will be asked to read a number of classic and contemporary texts from the genre of weird fiction and analyze corresponding media in terms of their depiction of the weird, eerie and uncanny. Please note: some of these texts are many decades old and will contain elements that are considered quite controversial today - these aspects will also be discussed.
A presentation and a written assignment are required to pass this elective.