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Trick or treat! AI image Introduction The figure of the undead has long fascinated literature and cinema, serving as a mirror for cultural anxieties and philosophical reflection. From Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) to contemporary films like 28 Days Later (2002) and Resident Evil (2002), the living dead challenges our understanding of life, death, and the boundaries in between. This article explores how such figures resonate with the thought of Jacques Derrida, particularly his notions of hauntology and spectrality , and with Sigmund Freud’s concept of the uncanny ( Das Unheimliche , 1919). By examining the intersection of horror cinema and philosophy, we can see how the undead enact a profound destabilization of categorical oppositions, revealing the philosophical and affective power of the uncanny. The Uncanny and the Living Dead Freud describes the uncanny as “that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar” (Freud, 1919, p. 124...

Splitting . AI image   Cutting the House: The Gesture of Splitting When Gordon Matta-Clark received permission in 1974 to work on a condemned suburban house in Englewood, New Jersey, he did not decorate, preserve, or restore it—he cut it in half. The resulting work, Splitting , transformed an ordinary dwelling into an open wound. The gesture was simple yet profound: by slicing through the center and slightly lowering one section, Matta-Clark revealed the invisible scaffolding that sustained the structure. What had been the image of stability became a vision of fragility, a space simultaneously opened and undone. Born from the architectural debris of post-industrial America, Splitting occupies the uncertain ground between art and demolition. The house—typical, middle-class, anonymous—was already destined for destruction. Matta-Clark intervened before its erasure, turning loss into revelation. He shaved the foundation, sawed a vertical line through the entire building, and allow...