For many, the ‘uncanny’ is experienced when something repressed or alienated has been awakened in our consciousness, which may seem strangely familiar (Schneider, 1999).

At the same time, this experience of the uncanny can often evoke fear, unpleasantness and/or repulsion. Doppelgänger explores Freudian anxieties of the ‘uncanny’ and ‘double’ through repetitive and intrusive imagery.

The subject, submersed in fluids, depicts the relationship between the conscious and subconscious being, hinting of one’s mortality being a rite of passage, which, unknowable and ungraspable, is why we fear it (Freud, 1919).

Ellen Formby, Doppelgänger, 2012, digital video, audio, 3:12 min