Encounters of the Uncanny Kind at the Origin of the New World

Nadja Ben Khelifa's contribution critically reflects epistemologies employed in forging the Uncanny Valley's "human being" in terms of alterity, on the occasion of the author's experience of a disruptive incident at the exhibition entitled "The Origin of the New World". The exhibition was presented at Zurich's ZHDK in the context of Masahiro Mori's idea of the "Uncanny Valley", which suggests that there is a point at which increasing similarity of an artificial object with a human being will result in an onlooker's uncanny reaction to it. The contribution discusses the historic influence of gender normativity on the uncanny reaction.