Apeirophobia

Apeirophobia Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry, Aparophobia, VIVID, 2012, 128pp. b&w, pb, ¿10, 978 0 9552483 4 4.

'Apeirophobia' is the fear of infinity, and may be manifest as a gnawing fixation on the endlessness of space and the innumerable possibilities of time. Of all the phobias we might list, it is one of the most abstract. Most anxiety disorders - say, gephyrophobia (fear of bridges), mottephobia (fear of butterflies) or coulrophobia (fear of clowns) - are centred on a concrete object or experience. But it is the more general phobia that is frequently of interest to artists and writers, for the more general an anxiety, the broader the author's statement might be. Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins, for example, might be said to be exploring the idea of modern psychological depth through the motif of taphephobia (fear of being buried alive); artworld audiences may be more familiar with David Batchelor's Chromophobia, 2000, which details modernity's quest for colour-purity; and I'm a fan of Roberto Bolaño's posthumous opus 2666, which features an exhaustive index of pathologies including the mother of all of them, phobophobia (fear of fear itself). Here, phobias are a measuring stick for society's vertiginous path into new technological, architectural and visual landscapes.

Karen Kihlberg &. Reuben Henry's Aparophobia is an anti-catalogue that remixes and expands upon works made by the duo over the past few years. Its modest format invites you to read it as, say, a novel or volume of poetry, but it quickly shrugs off any attempt at linearity, and one finds oneself shuttling back and forth between image and text. This elliptical structure is most...