Manifesta Journal 3

MJ - Manifesta Journal
journal of contemporary curatorship
N3, Spring / Summer 2004

Exhibition as a Dream
Exhibition
as a Dream
No. 3, Spring / Summer 2004

no. 3
Viktor Misiano, Igor Zabel
228 Exhibition as Dream
Contents
no. 3
Hans Ulrich Obrist: A Conversation with Alejandro Jodorowsky
312 Neither a Real Beginning nor a Real End
Maria Hlavajova Jochen Volz

no. 3 232 For Lack of a Better Word no. 3 328 Dreaming of...
Victor Mazin Peio Aguirre, Leire Vergara

no. 3 240 Dreaming Museums no. 3 330 The Power of Abstract Dreaming
Valery Podoroga WHW

no. 3 254 The Fork: An Experimental Cartography of Sleep no. 3 334 Deep Sleep
Igor Zabel: A Conversation with Kathrin Rhomberg Una Szeemann

no. 3 282 Perhaps it is the Destiny of Utopias that They Are no. 3 336 The Floating Love Parade
No Longer Where We Expect Them
Gregor Jansen
Kathrin Rhomberg no. 3 358 Lets Destroy the Earth but Keep Humans
no. 3 288 Ausgetrumt...
Luca Cerizza
Udo Kittelmann no. 3 362 Ill Let You Be in my Dream, if I Can Be in Your Dream...
no. 3 292 The Living Museum
Victor Palacios
Tobias Berger no. 3 368 Dreaming is the Most Ancient Aesthetic Activity.
no. 3 294 Pacific Dreams
Raimundas Malasauskas
Pavel Pepperstein no. 3 372 An Exhibition in Words
no. 3 298 Dreaming as Adventure
Alia Rayyan
Pavel Pepperstein no. 3 380 Bidoun
no. 3 304 Dreams and Museum
Alicia Framis
Questionnaire: The Project You Always Dreamed of... no. 3 384 The Dreamkeeper
no. 3 308 Nicolas Bourriaud
no. 3 309 Robert Fleck
no. 3 310 Giacinto di Pietrantonio
FROM THE EDITORS
Exhibition
as Dream
Viktor Misiano
is a critic and curator
based in Moscow.
Art has traditionally been closely connected to dreams. Works of art have the strange
ability to connect illusion and reality, the personal and the social. Cogent and
In Freuds view, art can be described as a sort of dream or fantasy, but with one
essential difference namely, it is able to transcend the fantasies of the individual
He was the Director comprehensive efforts to eliminate the illusionary, fictive dimension of art and make and become social. Like dreams, works of art represent the illusionary fulfillment of
(from 1992 to 1997) it an integral part of reality go back as far as Plato s critical remarks on poetry and artists desires but shaped in such a way that others, too, can enjoy them. (Work
of the Contemporary
Art Center in Moscow, visual art. Such efforts received new meaning and importance in the past century on the artistic form plays a special role here, according to Freud.)
and is currently Deputy with modernist and avant-garde artists and critics and have been prevalent over the
Director of ROSIZO,
the State Center past decade, as well, for example, with art in the social space. And yet sooner or Curatorial work is, of course, not artistic work, but neither it is completely different.
for Museums and later we have had to face the fact that art remains essentially distanced from reality. The connections between artistic production and curating go beyond the fact that
Exhibitions. He is
This, however, is not necessarily a weakness. It may, indeed, be such distance that the curator necessarily deals with works of art; there are far more complex
the founder and chief
editor of the Moscow has made it possible for art to disclose certain aspects of reality and heighten our parallelisms, correspondences, and similarities between the two endeavors. It is
Art Magazine. awareness of them. interesting, then, to ask whether curating, too, can at least partly be described as
Igor Zabel an oneiric activity. For example, while it is often taken for granted that curating is a
is a curator and critic. The past century also attributed new importance to the phenomenon of dreams and highly rational process, some projects are actually based on the curators dreams or
He is a curator
at the Moderna Galerija its role not only in ones personal life, but also in the life of society, especially visions. If works of art may be described as dreams or fantasies that can be enjoyed
(Museum of Modern through the introduction of the concept of the unconscious. In this regard, the by others (thanks to the work on form invested by the artist), might not curatorial
Art) in Ljubljana. traditional parallelism of art and dreams has been reinterpreted. There have been projects be similarly described, and if so, to what extent? Is it, indeed, possible to
several (sometimes opposing) theories on the unconscious, dreams, and the oneiric speak about a curatorial unconscious ? The contributions in the present issue of MJ
nature of art that have been highly influential for both the understanding and the offer some illuminating insights into these issues. Our goal was, at the very least, to
production of art. Theories developed by Freud may be of particular importance indicate the complexity and heterogeneity of the topic. We also found it important
here. Freud understood dreams as part of the dynamic relation between desire and that dreaming, whether personal or social, is always based on particular
the forces of repression. Inasmuch as society functions (and is, indeed, made circumstances, especially the needs and limitations of the dreamer. This aspect, we
possible) through repression, dreams, too, represent the dynamic crossing of the hope, can be seen in the diversity of our contributors, who come from various
individual and the social, the drive and the prohibition. generations and cultural contexts.
228 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 3 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 3 229

As we were preparing this issue, we also wanted to examine the fact that in recent inhabitants, and go on to point to the fate of the communist project as the most
years a number of exhibitions and other curatorial projects have shown a strong characteristic example of a utopian vision come true. Even so, over the past few
interest in the phenomenon of dreams. One such example is the book Sogni/Dreams years, several exhibitions have shown an interest in (social) dreams and utopias.
(1999), in which Francesco Bonami and Hans Ulrich Obrist collected the How can we understand this interest on the part of both artists and curators? We
contributions of over a hundred people, predominantly artists, who described their believe that this is not simply a sign of amnesia, of forgetfulness about the
dreams. The project indicated a belief that (artists) dreams are of particular value totalitarian dimension of utopia. On the one hand, it certainly reflects the basic
for the broader audience, as well; that is, they are not just raw material for social and cultural conditions that determine, among other things, the field of art.
subsequent works by the artists, nor are they merely curious objects of study for In this sense, we should connect the idea of (social) dreams and utopias with such
those interested in the psychological or psychoanalytical interpretation of art. The issues as global power relations, conflicts between the rich and the exploited or
dream descriptions themselves appear as minimalist, occasionally witty, and at repressed, social and geopolitical struggles, the role of ideologies, etc. (The theme
times genuinely powerful works of art. Of course, this is true to a large degree of the of the 2003 Venice Biennale, Dreams and Conflicts, may serve as an excellent
because, as Freud might say, the artists invested a great deal of secondary revision example, along with several other exhibition projects.) Here again, Freuds model of the
in these descriptions; that is, they are formulated through the work on the form. dream as a dynamic unity of the individual and the society, of the manifest and
the latent, of the accepted and the repressed, and of desire and prohibition can
Bonami and Obrists book, however, points to yet another important aspect we be useful.
connect with the notion of dreams. When we speak of dreams, we do not
necessarily mean only personal fantasies. To dream can mean to envision On the other hand, however, the recent revival of interest in dreams and utopias also
something that does not yet exist but that arises from the needs, imperfections, and reflects a need to transcend the present, which is felt both as unchangeable and
difficulties of the present. In this sense, dreams can be linked to projects and intolerable. In this context, utopias are understood not as projects to be imposed on
actions. Such visions and projects can be individual, but they can also social, in society but as deliberately imaginary, dreamlike visions that, nevertheless, question
other words, utopias. the present natural world order. When political alternatives appear to be in deep
crisis, it seems that it is left to the field of art to sustain our ability to dream and to
Utopian thinking has been severely criticized in recent decades as being inherently hope.
totalitarian. Critics claim that projects based on utopian visions of perfect societies
are necessarily violent and nihilistic in regard to the really existing world and its The editors gratefully acknowledge the help of Viktor Mazin in preparing this issue.

EXHIBITIONS ON DREAMS
Maria Hlavajova
For Lack
of a Better Word
Maria Hlavajova
(born 1971, based
It all began with a language dilemma: How does one refer to an artistic practice that
undertakes a responsibility for society and participates in the production of a new
thoughts during sleep. We can, however, also interpret dreaming as a process of
musing or fantasy while awake, especially on the fulfillment of wishes or hopes (a
2
Now What? Dreaming
a Better World in Six
in Amsterdam and Parts, organized by
Utrecht) is a curator reality a practice that strives for a better world and embraces both the poetics dictionary definition). It is this subtext of deep aspiration and longing for unattained BAK, basis voor actuele
and the artistic director kunst in Utrecht,
of BAK, basis voor
and politics of such endeavor? desires or goals that leads me to propose dreaming as a temporary linguistic November 1-December
actuele kunst in construction that addresses a practice that is political: one that is oriented toward 16, 2003. The sixth
Utrecht. In 2000, To call it utopian is tempting. The notion of utopia, as a metaphor for ideal social, the future and maintains aesthetics as a primary tool for communicating political part, a book of artists
she co-curated writings titled Now
Manifesta 3, Borderline political, and moral constructions, has been invoked in (too) many exhibitions meaning. For the present issue of Manifesta Journal, on the topic of dreaming and What? Artists Write,
Syndrome: Energies of recently. But the unattainable aspect of utopia, its not-to-be-realized characteristics, art, let us propose that dreaming could function in the same way it did in the will be published in
Defense, in Ljubljana, June 2004 in
Slovenia. seems once again to enclose art in an ivory tower. Although the term may point project Now What? Dreaming a Better World in Six Parts,2 and for the same reason, collaboration with
towards the not-real, and may sound obsolete in light of current conditions, the namely, for lack of a better word. Revolver, Archiv fr
This text includes aktuelle Kunst.
passages that originally
ways of thinking that accompany it are not obsolete! I would like to advocate the
appeared in various idea, however abstract it may seem, that art creates a particular mental environment Now What? Dreaming a Better World in Six Parts was a project with a multifaceted
documents related to in which creative thoughts with political relevance can be meditated, presented, and format consisting of six autonomous parts taking place simultaneously (with the
the project Now What?
Dreaming a Better experimented with, and that such thoughts can even be tried out and implemented exception of the two publications) at various locations in the city of Utrecht. It was
World in Six Parts. within a broader social context as real proposals for positive change. developed to explore the capacity of art to envision the political potential of
1
Boris Groys, in dreaming, and to create a series of occasions triggering imaginative ideas geared
conversation with In this regard, spaces marked for art could play an instrumental role as mediators. towards alternatives to the world we know today. The project appeared at a moment
Kathrin Rhomberg,
in Ausgetrumt . . .
What makes art interesting for me, says Boris Groys, are the spaces marked for when (mainly in our immediate European environment) the general optimism of the
(Vienna: Secession, art. . . . They can be used to develop alternative ideas, to make room for discourses, 1990s, linked to the end of communism in Europe, the proliferation of technologies
2002), 36. political stances, and attitudes that have little or no place in society. Artists and such as the Internet, and the globalization of economic markets, seemed to have
intellectuals are then effective when they are able to use those spaces in such a way been replaced by a feeling of disillusionment. The collapsing promise of global
that society suddenly says: aha, something is going on there that actually does not mobility and economic well-being, as well as the growing influence of right-wing
happen in the midst of our everyday lives.1 I imagine such a space marked for art thinking around the world, contributed to such sentiments. The violent
as a basis a foundation, an understructure on which artistic production, as well consequences of capitalist neoliberal supremacy and fundamentalist thinking,
as the production of knowledge (about the world and in the world) takes place. reinforced in particular by the events of September 11, 2001, have caused
While maintaining a state of constant preparedness (of being ready for use or enormous changes in the global political climate. These new conditions endow art
action), on the one hand, and acknowledging the quality of the indefinite (or the with a fresh urgency to create a space for imagining things differently.
yet-to-be), on the other, such a space for art could be an ideal setting for articulating
visionary artistic perspectives. But could one refer to such art as dreaming? BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, provided a base from which each part of the project
unfolded through the experimental collaboration of a number of invited artists,
The term dreaming is radically imprecise when isolated from the political context curators, and partners from other disciplines. The six parts each presented a
we are discussing. It refers, in the first place, to our unconscious and involuntary particular perspective and took various forms, such as exhibitions, performances,

Is it not from dreams
that society can be made?
3 4
Part 1, On Hope and and discussions. The project also includes the publication of a newspaper and a breathtaking, and one cannot help following her sermon until she states that Part 2, Fantastic
Other Misunderstandings, Prophecy, featured
featured the artists book of artists writings. we are the ones who have the right thing. The contours of religious demagogy the artists Heather Allen,
Kamal Aljafari, become obvious through confrontation with ones own beliefs and values, and as a Fabienne Audeoud
Weronika Althamer, and John Russell,
Yael Davids,
For the exhibition On Hope and Other Misunderstandings,3 the first part of the viewer, I have to acknowledge that this dream is not mine. The Kit (Emmanuelles Tobias Bernstrup,
Gerrit Dekker, Gelatin, project, I invited artists to explore the notion of hope as a powerful motivating force Annual Manual) (2002-2003), by Maria Pask, was the work that, perhaps, most Phil Collins, Paddy
Sanja Ivekovi, Jlius grounded not only in social and political utopias, but also in daydreams, religion, directly supported the notion of the ideal imagination of art proposing concrete Jolley and Reynold
Koller, Denisa Lehock Reynolds, Katarina
and Boris Ondreika, and art itself. According to Ernst Bloch, who described hope as dreaming forward, solutions for society. The Kit is a survival guide, a personalized compendium of Lfstrm, Janice
Deimantas Narkevicius, we seek, in hope, ways of emancipating ourselves from the everyday organization instructions, a ready-to-use reference book for confronting existential emergencies. McNab, Arturas Raila,
Maria Pask, Willem Francesco Vezzoli,
de Rooij and Jane of individual and social life by questioning its structures and mechanisms. Hope is What are our abilities, physically and mentally? the artist asks. Are we able to and was curated by
Ostermann-Petersen, a powerful anticipatory virtue, which is, nonetheless, also readily claimed by unlearn previously accepted models, as they may restrict a more experimental plan Annie Fletcher and
Bojan arevi, Liutauras Psibiliskis.
Jaan Toomik, Lois and
manipulative ideologies that tend to employ tools of domination and mystification of action in critical circumstances? After her critical assessment of the situation and
Franziska Weinberger, consider, for example, communism or fundamentalist religion. The common the potential dangers society might be facing, Pask outlines the basic essentials
and was curated ground for such claims is the search for something better, which, unfortunately, about self-sustainable survival methods and problem-solving in preparation for a
by Maria Hlavajova.
every so often leads to accepting seemingly attractive ideological constructions that world crumbling around you.
offer dubious promises of social and political freedom.
Is it not from dreams that society can be made? Curators Annie Fletcher and
In the exhibition, Kamal Aljafari presented the poetic document Visit Iraq (2003), Liutauras Psibilskis posed this question in Part 2 of the project, the exhibition
which exposes the stereotypical thinking that accompanies a social clash Fantastic Prophecy.4 Looking at fantasy as a generative and visionary force, they
omnipresent in the media. He chose to highlight an urban fragment of present-day explored to what extent what we imagine becomes what we are. A good example
Geneva: the abandoned offices of Iraqi Airways. Through a series of interviews with of this exploration was seen in Vilnius-based artist Arturas Railas ongoing work
people living in, or passing through this particular neighborhood, Aljafari presents Forever Lacking and Never Quite Enough (2001-2003). Raila works with archival
the viewer with a number of suppressed clichs. Though the closing of the airlines footage of the occupations of Lithuania by the Russians in 1940, the Germans in
office is not directly related to the present conflict in Iraq, people much too quickly 1941, and the Russians again in 1944. The way he selects and organizes the
arrive at superficial conclusions about the matter. Weronika Althamer, Pawel sequences of images corresponds to how these events are retold by ordinary people
Althamers seven-year old daughter, who took on the role of the artist in this among themselves, rather than to officially established historiography.
exhibition, articulated her vision of the Western world and the world of adults: her Superimposed on the intuitive historical narration in the piece, amateur Lithuanian
installation Wild West (2003) consisted of a horde of unidentifiable creatures made poet Genius Strazdas reads his poems, creating an overpowering experience where
of childrens clay and toys in a fantastic environment, as if she took the world we the viewer is confronted with the gaps that exist between personal expression and
know and remodeled it around her own dreams and hopes. The work Leith historical representation. Phil Collins presented work he has developed in
Valentine Live from Egeldonk Garage (1994-2001), by Willem de Rooij and Jane relationship to people seeking asylum. Collinss installation consists of photographs
Ostermann-Petersen, shows a preacher of Resurrection Power during a religious in which refugees are presented the way they wish to be seen and understood. Burn
worship service in Amsterdam. Her charismatic, impressive performance is (2001), by Paddy Jolley and Reynold Reynolds, on the other hand, depicts a scene

in the interior of a house in flames. Notwithstanding the circumstances, the Maria Pask:
The Kit (Emmanuelles
inhabitants continue with their daily activities, whatever they might be. There are Annual Manual), 2002
many ways to interpret the work, but if one wanted to translate this metaphor into - 2003, publication
the context under discussion, one could read it as a powerful call to persevere and
remain constant and purposeful, despite obstacles or discouragement.
The third part, The World Question Center (Reloaded), was a one-day public
performance on November 1, 2003, conceived by Jens Hoffmann from an idea
originating with the artist James Lee Byars (1932-1997). In 1969, Byars created
the World Question Center, based on his belief that the most creative and fruitful
ideas should be posed in the form of questions. Answers, in his opinion, are
enclosed and final, and cannot get you any further than you are in the present.
Byars compiled a list of the hundred most brilliant minds of his day and asked them
what questions they were asking themselves. In order to revisit Byars performance
today, the artists, curators, and other participants in Now What? . . . collectively
created a list of todays brilliant minds and telephoned them to ask which questions
they found important for our time.
The fourth part of Now What? . . . included a series of conversations in which

cultural producers were asked to invite guests to discuss such themes as Towards
Ideal Dimensions in the Built World (with Marieke van Rooy, Michelle Provoost and
Apolonija uteri), To Want the Moon (As If It Can Actually Be Obtained) (with
Ann Demeester, Katie Holten, and Piet Joostens), Beyond Authorship (with Ole
Bouman, Dennis Kaspori, and Lev Manovich); Activating Present Potentials (with
Jellichje Reijnders, Jennifer Mojica, and Vita Zaman), and Seeing What Is Not
There (with Hilde de Bruijn, Keith Tester, and Arun Saldanha).
The Projection, the fifth part, was developed by Anke Bangma in the form of a
newspaper to share the critical questioning running through the project with a
larger cultural community, and to advocate the potential or artistic imagination and
visionary thinking in a political context, which is predominantly guided by economic
and pragmatic interests and in which problem-solving is valued over imaginative

Arturas Raila: speculation. The Projection included essays by various authors, including Klaas
Forever Lacking and
Never Quite Enough, Hoek, Robert Pfaller, and Steve Rushton.
2001 - 2003, video
still, courtesy IBID
Projects London and
The sixth part, the book Now What? Artists Write!,5 will appear in June 2004. This
Vilnius is a book of some twenty texts written by artists (Tiong Ang, Liam Gillick, Sigudur
5
Gudmundsson, Job Koelewijn, and Anatoly Osmolovsky, among others) discussing,
Edited by Mark
Kremer, Maria on the one hand, the subjects they deal with in their artistic practice and, on the
Hlavajova, and Annie other, the themes that permeate the project Now What? . . . As we have learned
Fletcher.
from art history, including the history of contemporary art, artists writings have been
a valuable resource for knowledge about art and its context. Texts by artists reach a
level of precision that would otherwise remain undisclosed to us; they can fill the
discursive gaps between artistic thought and critical writing about arts
manifestations. The book is a document that presents the reader with the need to
respond to the current momentum. It is meant to become a specific forum to voice
the artists (day)dreams as visions for the future, not only about the world as we
know it, but also the one we seek to envision, the world we dream.
In place of a conclusion: In the case of Now What? Dreaming a Better World in Six
Parts, the word dreaming has been used as a relative, context-dependent term.
But the lack of any precise terminology contributed conceptually to the project:
dreaming, with its connotations of the performative and the experiential ensured
the project with a dynamic relationship to the real. Why else would the director of
the Utrecht refugee center, when contacted as one of the brilliant minds for The
World Question Center (Reloaded) in Part 3, suggest replacing dreaming a better
world with making one?

NOTES ON SIGMUND FREUDS DREAM MUSEUM
Viktor Mazin
Dreaming Museums 1
Viktor Mazin 1. The Museum of the Non-Representable: A Prehistory bureaucrats only asked him one question: Oh, so is Freud British, then? The Based upon their
is a theoretician, observation of Freud
art critic and curator.
conversation was over. writing the book, his
Hes a specialist in the Sigmund Freuds Dream Museum is a single work of art that consists of many different relatives tell of how the
field of theoretical parts, a total installation created by the artist Vladimir Kustov and me as curators. The One might say that the history of the founding of the museum begins with oneiro-writer would
psychoanalyses. leave his pavilion in a
Hes founder and museum opened on November 4, 1999, marking the centennial anniversary of the negotiations with a certain prominent European museum of contemporary art. In the state similar to
director of the Sigmund publication of Sigmund Freuds The Interpretation of Dreams. Incidentally, from a mid-1990s, I suggested an exhibition based on objects from Sigmund Freuds somnambulism, once he
Freuds Dream Museum psychoanalytical perspective, the phrase single work of art that consists of many collection and the texts of his dream-theory. I was largely motivated by theoretical had completed yet
(1999) and lives in another fragment of his
St-Petersburg. different parts can actually be applied to subjectivity. Throughout the 1920s, Freud interests: I wanted to understand and establish the connection between the text.
consistently maintained that the human being is a collection of different representations collections objects and The Interpretation of Dreams. At the time, I perceived this
of the self. In this sense, the installation corresponds to its name rather accurately - motivation as a curatorial interest. Yet the task seemed so important to me that I was
Sigmund Freuds Dream Museum. hardly concerned with the question of whether the originals would be brought from
Sigmund Freuds museum (and former apartment) in London or whether we would
The idea of founding the museum arose about ten years before its physical realization. use copies. For the curators from the museum of contemporary art, this was the
During these ten years, the idea underwent a great many transformations. And in primary - if not the only - question. They were only interested in the originals, and
general, the museums origins are overdetermined, as is the case with any creative the question they were worried about most was how to keep insurance and
event. To put it differently, it was re-determined many times over. transportation costs down. Not surprisingly, our discussions quickly came to an end.
You can theorize to your hearts content at conferences and congresses about Walter
One might say the history of the founding of the museum begins with the shoeboxes I Benjamin and Jean Baudrillard, simulacra and simulationism, but when things come
used in my childhood to build scenes from the Mesozoic era. In the darkness of a closet, to the crunch, curators say no to copies. Yet this no actually had two positive
a small light bulb lit prehistoric landscapes inhabited by dinosaurs, which I, then deeply consequences for me: first, I finally understood that I wasnt interested in material
immersed in the space of waking dreams, had copied, colored, cut, and pasted into objects, the so-called originals, and second, I realized it was necessary to build a
shoebox dioramas from a Czech book on paleontology. museum of immaterial objects in St. Petersburg, a city that has a reputation for being
not quite real, as one might say.
One might say the history of the founding of the museum begins in conversations with
my friend Michael Molnar. During the late 1980s, Michael, a great expert on the history Why immaterial objects?
of psychoanalysis, told me about Sigmund Freuds collection of antiquities. Several years - Because the question of original vs. copy had no primary meaning to Freud as he was
later, we began to talk about the possibility of exhibiting pieces from this collection. assembling his private museum.
Throughout this time, neither Michael nor I wanted to be the curator of such an - Because the calling into question of the opposition between the reality of what
exhibition, in the way that position is usually understood in Russia; we didnt want to actually is and the reality of the imagination proved fundamental to the birth of
transport and organize tens or hundreds of antiquities. We longed for a creative process psychoanalysis in 1897. Psychic reality became its main object of inquiry.
and a creative result. Maybe, I also wanted to return - without realizing it - to the magical - Because The Interpretation of Dreams is a book, the bible of psychoanalysis, from
dinosaur theater of my childhood. Yet the fresh wind of reality laid siege to our dreams. which I have drawn my curatorial ideas.1
Curatorial oneirics collided with the logic of vigilant reason. Michael called the British - Because even if I didnt realize it, I wanted to combine my two passions of art and
embassy in Moscow with the suggestion of organizing the exhibition in Russia. The psychoanalysis, for it was this combination that guided Freuds thinking a century ago.

Both art and dream
represent absent,
hallucinated objects,
desires fulfilled.
2
Cf. Sigmund Freud and Thus, my curatorial desire matured. A conceptual plan was forged: it was necessary to between curator and artist, theoretician and designer.7 No, no, no! Creative interaction Petersburg), 1999;
Art. His personal collection Approaching. The
of antiquities. Edited by represent psychic reality, hallucinations, and dreams, to present the non-representable. erases the boundary between these social roles, between such narrow capitalist Museum of Forensic
Lynn Gamwell and Richard Why non-representable? Because, as we all know, when we sleep, we do not exist; specializations. One might say that some of the theoretical ideas were actually put forth Medicine at the State
Wells. State University of Medical Academy
New York and Freud when we wake up, there are no dreams. Our ideas of dreams, represented as oral by Kustov, while some of their practical solutions came from me. (St.Petersburg), 2001; The
Museum, London, 1989; Nucleon Dream City.
see also the publication on
narratives, notes, drawings, or movies, are never actually identical with dreams as such. Rotor Association for
occasion of the museums In their reproduced forms, dreams can never be the same as the reality of dreaming. But this, too, would be wrong. As you sink into the oneiric state of creativity, in the Contemporary Art (Graz),
opening Kabinet snovidenii 2003.
doktora Freida [Freuds
Furthermore, the reality of dreaming does not actually exist in and of itself. To put it affected exchange of ideas, can you (and, more importantly, should you) really draw a
Dreams Museum differently, dreams are copies without an original. The original is always already beyond line between one person and another?8 To interject something like That was my idea! 6
For more, see V.Mazin
Consulting Room], Saint- Kniga Snovidenii I Kniga
Petersburg: Inapress, our existence. Through its absence, the mirage of dreaming sustains our existence. or I thought of this! is to bury the idea itself. Collaborative creativity is not only a form Mertvykh [The Book of
1999. of resisting the capitalist call for specialization but also a form of hidden struggle with Dreams and The Book of
the Dead//Psykhoanalis,
3
Lyotard J.-F. (1971) This is how the idea of founding Sigmund Freuds Dream Museum was conceived. My the illusion of the autonomous ego. We were so interested in the process itself that 2003, !2. Kiev.- !A.120-
Freud selon theoretical interest warmed as I read Freuds own texts, as well as articles about his we devoted hardly any thought at all to the moment when the museum would be built. 149
Czanne//Des dispositifs
pulsionnels. P.: Galile, collection and his love of classical art.2 It became clear that the most important thing For me, the most unexpected, even shocking, episode in the entire story occurred when 7
Much in the same way,
1994. - p. 73. was to make sense of Freuds hidden aesthetic, namely his theory of representation. the museum opened to the public. As it turned out, I completely forgot about this aspect theory and praxis cannot be
separated in the disciplinary
4
This question was central Both art and dream represent absent, hallucinated objects, desires fulfilled.3 Art and of the project. One day, a visitor just appeared on our doorstep and said, Ive come to history of psychoanalysis;
to a series of lectures and instead, their relationship
exhibitions that took place
dreams are superimposed on one another imperceptibly.4 It remained to be seen how see Sigmund Freuds Dream Museum. I was dumbfounded, as if one of the dinosaurs can be connected to a
in the Museum together exactly one could represent the non-representable. In order to make the dream of the from my childhood shoeboxes had come to life. series of technical
with the British Council in innovations, such as
2001, whose participants
Dream Museum come true, I needed an artist. I should mention, by the way, that Freuds relation to his
included Susan Hiller, without the collaboration of a great many different people - artists, theoreticians, In deciding on how to represent the connection between dreams and Freuds book, we patients.
Mikhail Ryklin, Michael
Molnar, Victor Mazin, Pavel psychoanalysts, and curators - the creative process is devoid of any meaning in general. set ourselves the task of revealing the mechanisms of representation. In other words, 8
Of course, this question
Pepperstein, Ivan Rzumov we wanted to represent the way dreams worked, but not dreams as such, which would can also applied to Freud,
(Kabinet J. Arts & who re-attributed various
Dreams. Ed. By Anastasya One might say that the founding of the museum began with a partnership that has be impossible. We decided to present what Freud called Traumarbeit, dream-work, theoretical breakthroughs
Boudanoque and Victor lasted many years, namely with my collaboration with the artist Vladimir Kustov, a displacement, condensation, and representability. In this sense, Sigmund Freuds more than once. He even
Mazin. Saint-Petersburg: sometimes credited the
Scyphia, 2002). perfectionist, necrorealist, conceptualist and installation artist.5 It is also important to Dream Museum is a museum of oneirotechnology. invention of
realize that Kustov had his own hidden agenda, namely to create a corridor of dying. psychoanalysis to one of
5
Some of his installations his colleagues, namely to
include An Explosion on This corridor is one of the main ideas in his work. I must confess that I had always We were also able to resolve a number of general issues. For example, the question of Breuer. Certain formulations
Anichkov Bridge. and even entire fragments
Badischer Kunstverein
smiled to myself ironically when I thought of Vladimirs idea, but only up to the time dream space. This space has little in common with the space of the waking world. We of The Interpretation of
(Karlsruhe), 1996; The when I found myself in the Valley of the Pharaohs in Luxor, a few years after the wanted to collapse the installations physical dimensions. We wanted it to be neither Dreams are also attributed
Epileptic Status of the to Freuds collaborators.
Golem. Stedelijk Museum
founding of the Dream Museum. When I first entered the corridor of tombs, I was small nor large, but something that endlessly shifts and deforms itself before your very
(Amsterdam), 1997; The immediately reminded of Kustovs idea. It seems he was right.6 eyes. It became clear to me only about a year after the museum opened just how far
Mausoleum as a Seclusion
of Form. The Lenin we had succeeded in making the museums space subjective. The art/music group
Museum (Tampere), For two years, Kustov and I discussed the form Freuds Dream Museum might take. The 2012 was scheduled to perform there. At first, one of the groups members came to
1999; Koma. The
Marble Palace at the State most important thing about this collaboration was the collaboration itself. It would be a visit, looked around, and left. Later another member arrived; he, too, was by himself.
Russian Museum (St. grave simplification to understand our interaction as the specialized relationship Finally, the groups manager appeared. Really, some people. . . he said. One of them
242 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 3 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 3

243
9
Valdimir Kustovs Freud comes back and tells me that the space is really big. The other goes and comes back London museum was founded in what was already a museum; its status simply A sad note: this
Portrait welcomes openness, enthusiasm,
to the Freuds Dream
to tell me that the space is far too small, but to me, its neither the one nor the other. . . changed from private to public. Our non-material superstructure, our cabinet of dreams, and creativity is a thorn
in Freuds Dreams only materialized thanks to the material support of the museums in both Vienna and in in the side of the
Museum 2. The Museum of Negation London, and thanks, especially, to the openness, unselfishness and uncomplicatedness bureaucrats. In the
summer of 2003, the
of Inge Scholz-Strasser and Erica Davies.9 bureaucrats of
The museum, then, is devoted to the idea of psychoanalysis - to dreams, fantasies, and psychoanalyis fired Erica
theories - as well as to Freuds passion for collecting antiquities. He began to collect Sigmund Freuds Dream Museum is located in St. Petersburg, which, as a city with a Davies from her post as
the director of the
archeological artifacts and to excavate the life of the psyche almost simultaneously, at reputation for being not quite real, seems the most appropriate home for this kind of London Freud-Museum.
the very end of the nineteenth century, just as he was writing his book on dreams. The museum. St. Petersburg is a city of topoi and utopias, a ghost-city, a dream-city, and They fired for her
openness and broad-
museum is devoted to theories, dreams, and Freuds book. a city of dreams. This is not only because of its history, from the moment of its mindedness, for her
conception in the mind of Peter the Great, and its meteorological phenomena, but also creative enthusiasm,
Conceptually, the Dream Museum is constructed in the form of triangle whose notional because of its mythology, the endless descriptions of the city, its literariness, its traits that the
bureaucrats fail to
vertices are: a) the collection of artworks Freud accrued for more than forty years, attachment to texts. To rephrase Andrei Bely, one might say, If there werent the St. understand and
beginning in 1897, b) Freuds dreams, which he interpreted psychoanalytically, Petersburg of Peter the Great, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Gogol, or Brodsky, St. Petersburg therefore hate. In part,
beginning in 1895, c) the psychic apparatus, whose basic principles of operation Freud would not exist. It only seems as though it exists. An unreal museum for an unreal city! Erica was fired for her
desire to hear the others
explored, beginning with his formulation of the The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899. A dream museum for a city of sleep!10 out, Edward Said for an
example, and for
cooperating with
I would like to stress, once again, that the museum is not dedicated to events of a Thus, in contrast to the museums in Vienna and London, the Dream Museum is not so
radical artists like
material nature. It does not deal with what people call historical fact. It is not much connected to a concrete place where Freud lived, nor does it have much to do Sarah Lucas, Sophie
dedicated to any real human being, living or dead. It is not dedicated to Sigmund with material things; instead, it deals with his dreams, with something ideal, Calle and others.
Freud. Instead, it is devoted to his book, where we find ourselves immersed in ideas, ephemeral, phantasmal, virtual, and scarcely discernable. 10
If Petersburg really is
experiences, dreams, interpretations, and desires. One of Freuds dreams was to find not the capital, then
a partial resolution to the conflict between an individuals narcissistic desires and his Unlike the other two Freud museums, the Dream Museum appeared in a town where Petersburg doesnt really
exist. It only seems like
power of reason. The figure for this resolution might have been the white Baboon of the famous psychoanalyst never set foot. Not only was Freud never physically in St. it exists (A. Bely.
Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing and death, a figurine from his collection. This Petersburg (or Petrograd, or Leningrad), he never even went to Russia. Freuds Dream Petersburg. Moscow:
image, representing a non-human, became the emblem of Sigmund Freuds Dream Museum is a museum of dreams, and dreams cannot be fixed to a concrete location. Chudozhestvenaya
Literatura, 1979. p.24
Museum. You may fall asleep in Vienna and find yourself in the midst of the architecture of St.
Petersburg; you may fall asleep in St. Petersburg and find yourself on Mars. Dreams fly
The St. Petersburg museum has ties of kinship to two material Freud museums in wherever they please.
Vienna and London. The Viennese museum was created in the psychoanalytical
quarters in which Freud worked for nearly fifty years, receiving patients, dreaming, and Perhaps the reader has already noticed that this essay contains many instances of the
theorizing. The museum in Vienna memorializes this creative process. The London word not and other negatives. Of course, this is not a coincidence! It is easier to
Freud Museum is located in the apartment where Freud lived during the last years of describe the Dream Museums distinctive features through negation. For example, one
his life. Today, it still houses his library, his famous couch, and his collection of might immediately note the fact that it is neither a museum of dreams in general, nor
antiquities, which numbers more than two thousand objects. In other words, the a museum devoted to Freud; rather, it is Sigmund Freuds Dream Museum.
11
Marinelli L. (1999) Perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it a non-museum, or even a museum of 3. The Museum of Immaterial Culture Freuds Dreams
Musei otritsanija [The Museum. The Dream
Museum of
negation. The psychoanalytical idea of a museum of negation does not belong to me. Hall, Screens and
Negation]//Kabinet As I said before, more than one artist and more than one curator participated in the There was nothing here. Only the whisper of the muses. Only a hallucinatory murmur. Screens
Snovidenii Doktora Freida museums construction. There were many curators and many artists. The idea for a 14
[Freuds Dreams Consulting The muses are the
Room]. Saint-Petersburg: museum of negation belongs to Lydia Marinelli, the excellent curator and director of Every museum is a temple of the muses. And in this sense, Freuds Dream Museum is daughters of the
Inapress.- P. 22. research at the Freud Museum in Vienna. In attempting to understand why we were indeed a museum. It is inhabited by Freuds muses, the inspirations of his images, his goddess of memory,
building a Freud museum in a place Freud had never even visited, she reached the possible memories.14 Yet in the traditional sense, Freuds Dream Museum is still an Mnemosine.
12
Ibid, pp.23-4.
following conclusions: anti-museum, since it is not a collection of material treasures. But nor is it merely the 15
Of course, this listing
13
Dreams fluctuate. Since Sigmund Freuds Dream Museum appeared in a place that Freud never visited, negation of what has already take place. inscribes the curatorial
Dreams diffuse. Dreams project into the field of
return. But as others.
it does not rely upon the guarantee of the mnemotechnics that endow historical contemporary art.
Maybe this is the source of discourse with its location. . . . The rhetorical function of the memorial place . . . The Dream Museum is an unreal museum in terms of its subject (dreaming), but it is
the curatorial desire to becomes its own opposite; the most vivid, vibrant impression turns out to be the feeling also not completely real in terms of its exhibits. In principle, Freuds Dream Museum is
dissipate this museum like
a mandala, only to build that nothing of historical import has ever happened here. This paradox falls out of the not a museum as a repository for objects of material culture. The museums exhibits are
yet another one. And on framework of classical rhetoric, approaching the form in which Freud clothed the not objects, but rather, their representations. These are not paintings, statuettes, colors,
and on, unto infinity. problem of how unconscious meaning is construed.11 Freuds Dream Museum seems masks, books, letters, or etchings, but their images. The principle is clear: in dreaming,
to say: There was nothing here, nothing but desires effects. we do not deal with objects (people, colors, paintings, death masks, sculptures, book-
bindings, cathedrals), but with their representations.
Negation leads to the dispersion of meaning; each of the museums exhibits is not only
characterized by the affirmation of its own polyvalence, but also by its negation of By the way, one should take with a grain of salt the affirmation that Freuds Dream
meaning. The museum in St. Petersburg refers to the absence of a direct connection Museum is not a museum of material culture. First of all, as an artwork or an
between its place and the events that interest us. This negation illuminates and installation, it is already an object of material culture. Second, among the many images
transforms it into a psychoanalytical space. There is nobody to remind the visitor of that Sigmund Freud might have contemplated, one can find a number of contemporary
Freuds personality, nor is there any reference to the unfolding of historical events. Thus, artworks that pay tribute to psychoanalysis, hinting at this or that psychoanalytical
the museums subject unexpectedly becomes the principle of psychoanalytic formula. On the whole, this incorporation of contemporary culture does not only turn
interpretation itself.12 chronology upside down, forcing time to return from the future; it also reminds us of the
fact that not only are we not speaking about the man Freud, der Mann Freud, but that
Sometimes, in pursuit of desire, one wants to follow the psychoanalytic method to its it is impossible to speak of him. Freud is a mirage in the prism of the present day. Thus,
very end. To its impossible end. To the negation of negation itself. To the dispersion of the dreams of the father of psychoanalysis are infused with artists like Pavel
the mirage called Freuds Dream Museum, a mandala scattered by the wind.13 There Pepperstein and Judith Barry, Sergei Bugaev-Afrika and Bracha Lichtenberg-Ettinger,
was nothing here, not even a Museum of Negation. Olga Tobreluts and Sophie Tottie, Gljukla and Andrei Khlobystin, Stas Makarov, Gosha
Ostretsov and Vitaly Pushnitsky, SunTechnics and Michaela Spiegel.15

Dream-work is the articulation
of desire through distortion,
displacement, and condensation.
16 17
Hagoort E. Inert Let us not forget, too, that all these artworks are incorporated into an installation by of the images in the space of the museum allows the eye to displace them. How can this idea be
avant- ours when it actually
gardism//Metropolis M.,
Vladimir Kustov; one might say they are partial objects. Their pressure on the viewer Condensation does not only create collective images; it also provides for the possibility originates in Freud?
Amsterdam, has been minimized. To quote the Dutch art critic Eric Hagoort: The contemporary of seeing one in the other, seeing the face of one as the countenance of the other.
2003/Nr.6.- p.63 Gesamtkunstwerk by psychoanalyst Viktor Mazin and artist Vladimir Kustov, the Today, it seems that the idea of many transparent (maybe even spectral) layers of
Freuds Dream Museum could perhaps fulfill the role of a Kaaba in the arts, a place meaning sprang to mind as soon as Kustov and I began to work together.
where art is sheltered from transparency. . . . In effect the Gesamtkunstwerk swallows
up all the individual art works in a phantasmagoric diorama: the Hall of Dreams. The work of displacement is left up to the visitor. In order to read a fragment of some
Mirrors, projections and sheets of transparent plastic reduce the view of the artworks to passage from The Interpretation of Dreams, viewers need to constantly change their
fragments.16 Thus, the Dream Museum finds itself on the frontline of the battle point of view. As the point of view changes, so does the bigger picture of dreams as
against illusionism, at a time when realism is returning to Russia in full force, as a form a whole. A symptomatic dialogue on the displacement of meaning somehow took
of overt illusionism. place with the mayor of Graz. Upon visiting the museum, he exclaimed: This is the
most anti-totalitarian museum I have ever had the opportunity to see! Thank you, I
4. The Museum of Memory replied, but this museum has no direct relationship to politics. But I dont mean
politics; Im talking about what the museum actually shows: if you change your point
From a psychoanalytical point of view, every dream is a particular form of of view, the entire picture changes. This displacement of accentuation allowed me to
remembering that presents unseen objects in distorted form. Dreams are an discover Lacans points du capiton (quilting points) in Freuds dreams: the
alternative form of memory, the memory of the distracted, scattered subject. One intersection of contexts changes the meaning of any text, including the text of the
might say that dream-work is the work of the subjects memory without the subject museum.
itself.
Furthermore, displacement makes it evident that nothing is principal or secondary. This
The Dream Museum is organized like a theater of memory. Meanwhile, memory is one was the thought that Kustov and I were pursuing: we wanted to present a changing
of the principal subjects of psychoanalysis, at least ever since Freud identified psychic oneiric multiplicity, a kaleidoscopic image. It is also in this sense that Freuds Dream
trauma with memory disorders. Memory - with all its mechanisms of forgetting, its Museum is an anti-museum. In a traditional museum, some hierarchy will inevitably
screen memoirs, its hallucinations, and its dreams - is the museums invisible fabric. fall into place. Practically every art museum is famous for one image or painting, which
fulfills the function of a kind of brand or trademark. This surprised me in my youth,
The museum of memory is not a museum-memorial; instead, it is a museum of before I actually understood that I had understood anything at all. It happened at the
forgetting. As the American artist Spenser Tunick puts it, it is the tunnel of mind. The Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresden. I simply couldnt understand why all the visitors
only thing that one can be sure of here is that there is something you do not know, that in a hall full of fantastic Renaissance paintings were crowding around Rafael. And there
you have forgotten something, that there is something you cannot remember. is another problem: all too often, museum professionals are tied to the chariot of this
type of branding. For example, the Louvre is full of signs, directing the visitor to its altar,
Dream-work is the articulation of desire through distortion, displacement, and the famous painting by Leonardo.
condensation.
Yet alas, despite our idea of decentering,17 the Dream Museum, too, has an altar. This
Condensation presupposes the combination of many things into one. The transparency altar is the dream-screen.

18
For more, see Mazin, 5. The Dream-Screen show some random range of images, but the visitors own images. The museum does Freuds Dreams
V. Ekran snovidenii Museum. Bracha
[The Dream-Screen]//
not upload; it downloads.
Lichtenberg-Ettingers
Vestnik psikhoanaliza In our view, the dream-screen fulfils two functions. First of all, in terms of design and work in Freuds Dreams
[Psychoanalytic technology, it brings additional light to the space through which the visitor moves. Furthermore, the museum literally shows the spectator an image of him- or herself. The Hall
Bulletin], !1, 2000.
Saint-Petersburg: Second, it represents the well-known psychoanalytical phenomenon of the dream- museum uses a multitude of mirrors. Some of them distend space into infinity. This
Nationalnaya federatsia screen onto which images are projected as in a cinema. However, from the very first simple technique once overwhelmed me in one of Calcuttas Jain shrines. Its entrance
psikhoanaliza, pp. 143- day of the museums opening, this screen has actually worked. consisted of a system of mirrors that showed the supplicant an endless series of
155.
reincarnations, going on and on to nameless oblivion.
19
Hagoort E. Inert One visitor came up to me and told me he had not had a single dream in forty years. I
avant-
gardism//Metropolis M.,
suggested that he might simply be forgetting them. He did not know whether to believe In the Dream Museum, the mirror does not only distend and disorient space - what
Amsterdam, me or not. And then, about twenty minutes after our conversation, this man burst into seemed to be in front of you is now behind you; what seemed so far away is now
2003/Nr.6.- p.64. my office: I saw it!!! I saw a dream on the screen! I saw a pack of wolves chasing a coming closer - but it also reminds us of Freuds idea that every dream is a form of
hunter! Now I did not know whether to believe him. narcissism. Everything we see when we dream is actually a part of our imagination, an
element of ourselves. This part is a fragment. The exhibitions mirrors are also
We started a guestbook so that museum visitors could share their experiences. The fragmented. Behind the looking-glass, beyond the mirror-stage, lies the dissipated ego.
number of dreams seen on the screen rose rapidly.18 On the one hand, we were pleased Dissolution is disillusion. Im so scattered. . .
to discover that peoples imaginations still work. It also made us happy that the screen
worked as a lightening rod for discharge rather than as an accumulator. On the other The worshippers of the dream-screen usually miss out on the first hall. They go
hand, an altar appeared. This is something we had not considered. But to worship straight to the screen. They dont pay any attention to the information in the first hall.
something or somebody, be it Sigmund Freud or Gautama Buddha, means blocking In an ordinary museum, this would probably provoke a feeling of protest or
and sealing off ones critical function. indignation: so they come to Freuds dreams and dont want to know anything about
him. But we actually welcome this. Because one of the tenets of psychoanalysis is
By the way, dreams are always full of the unexpected: A couple of girls and boys, who know thyself!
are seated on the floor in front of the empty screen, are meditating. A man in lotus
position is seemingly drinking in the light. The installation has evidently taken on a 6. Information on the Side
meaning that goes beyond what the creators ever imagined.19
The first hall of the Dream Museum is somewhat of a concession to the traditional
Thanks to the fact that the dream-screen actually works, the Dream Museum was able museum. It is well lit, conscious-preconscious, and informative.
to formulate its function as an anti-museum. Video screens, computer screens,
television screens, movie screens, and even the screen of a painting all show In the second hall, the hall of Freuds virtual dreams, there are neither labels nor
something. Encountering the dream-screen for the first time, visitors to the museum captions to explain the images, texts, and objects. The Dream Museum is an anti-
usually freeze up in bafflement. And then, they ask, When will the screen begin? When museum in this sense, as well. This does not mean the visitor is supposed to guess
will it start to show something? The answer: Whenever you begin. You will only see what exactly is going on, but that he sees exactly what he sees. It is as if Stephen
something on this screen if you un-focus yourself, if you relax. . . The museum doesnt Hawkings anthropic principle had been put into effect. We see the world this way and

Our own dreams
are the last refuge
of our individuality.
20
not that way because we are the ones who are looking at it. In other words, as Freud - Ourselves? But we are not actually peeking at someone elses dreams; instead, we See Michel Foucaults
analysis of Artemidoros
demonstrates insistently: there is no pristine, virginal form of perception. We see the rebuild them through our own imagination, our fantasies, and our hallucinations. A Oneirokritika, in The
world in the way we can see it and want to see it. walk through Freuds virtual dreams is an invitation to close ones eyes to the outside Care of the Self. [History
world and dive into the world of the psychoanalysts musings, whose origins lie in his of Sexuality III]. New
York: Vintage 1986,
The dialogue could replay the typical situation of psychoanalysis: dreams, to which his fantasies were connected. And this entry into another persons where Foucault
- What does that image mean? inner world turns out to be a form of self-immersion. demostrates how in the
- What does it mean to you? 2nd century CE, people
did little more than
The more the outer world becomes like somebody elses fantasy - through movies, interpret their own
Nevertheless, in recognition of the fact that the human being cannot survive without television, advertising, and computers - the more it becomes necessary to find oneself dreams.
information, we created the first hall, where one can look at photographs, read passages in this foreign dream. Our own dreams are the last refuge of our individuality. Today, 21
There are three
from The Interpretation of Dreams, and, generally speaking, learn about the life and there is a far more pressing need to engage with dreams, even more than when they volunteer curators at the
work of Sigmund Freud. Along from this, Kustov was following one of the principles by were a tool of existence.20 Dreams are not only the path to self-recognition; they are also Dream Museum. They
are Olga Matveeva, Vera
which Ilya Kabakov structures installations, which demands there be a transitional a form of resistance against the totalizing imperialist hallucination and its wholesale Ekimova, and Lena
space between the installation itself and the street. It can be dangerous to fall trade in industrialized identities. Zerkalova.
suddenly into dreams. 22
In this sense, one
For the museums curators,21 the most pleasant reactions are when visitors say things could call Freuds
7. The Museum of the Unremembered like Im beginning to feel myself, Im beginning to remember something very, very Dream Museum a
museum of perplexion,
important, something has happened to me, or I didnt understood anything; all these
an imaginary museum
Before actually visiting the museum, people often telephone us in an attempt to satisfy questions came up, but I cant formulate them yet.22 It is my hope that artists and of interrogation rather
their preliminary curiosity. What will we see there? they ask. But how do we answer curators find themselves in a similar state of perplexity, one that forces them to than a real museum of
affirmations [Andr
a question like that? formulate new questions over and over again. Malraux. Le Muse
Imaginaire. P.:
Photographs of reproductions that Freud brought back with him from his travels in Italy; Flammarion, 1965.-
P.176.].
copies of letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Freuds closest friend while he was writing The
Interpretation of Dreams; pages from the Phillipson Bible from which Freud learned to
read; illustrations that intertwine with his dreams; photographs of bookcases; passages
from The Interpretation of Dreams? But its not so much about what is there; its more
important to consider how they are represented.
- Words and images, hardly discernable in the half-light? As in a dream, we cannot

discern everything; we dont remember all that comes to the surface of our soul.
- The virtual dreams of Freud? Fragments of words and images, the rebus of the dream
he might have seen.

THEORY
Valery Podoroga
The Fork
An Experimental Cartography of Sleep
Valery Podoroga EPISTEME-MINIMUM Dreams do not have any details of significance (which is why the highest Christian-
is one of the leading
Russian philosophers, anthropomorphic form the human face is devoid of any meaning); there are
head of the Laboratory The Problem no close-ups, only totals and panoramas. Why? The answer could be as follows:
for Post-Classical
Research of the Institute
Questions with which we must inevitably begin: what are dreams and what is sleep? when I say that dreams do not permit the phenomenon of the face, I want to say
of Philosophy (Russian Is one a part of the other, or are they somehow different? Because sleep is, but something about the fact that the face is impossible not because it is prohibited or
Academy of Science). dreaming is, too is it possible to concede that sleep is a whole while dreams are because dreams do not work with it. Instead, dreams are actually constructed so as
She is the author of
books: Metaphysics of its part? Can we develop some sort of distance to dreaming? Can we acquire and not to allow any signs or internal dynamics to visually determine a face that sees
Landscape (1933), observe dreams as objects? Or do we simply need to indulge in our own personal the dream. Dreams actually are the face itself; if in dreaming, I meet someone who
Expression and Sense
(1995), experiences? When you ask yourself such questions, it is as if you were asking seems strangely familiar, so familiar that I think that I have met myself, I wake up
Phenomenology of a yourself whether dreams have their own physical (or objective) reality. Can we immediately; or as soon as the figure of the dreams character that is so similar to
Body (1995), editor
of the book
provide an explanation, not only of what happens to us when we fall asleep and me flashes or turns toward me, and I finally see myself, I no longer see anything .
Auto-bio-graphy dream, but also of when we awaken, the dream still fresh in our memories, waiting . . I have already awoken.
(2001), etc. Lives to be told, or, on the contrary, when we remember nothing at all. The first fork or There are no things, only signs: since dreams do not require the transmission of
in Moscow
bifurcation: between an image, seen in dreams, perceptible (dreams in themselves their objects qualities; in this case, dreams are only the scene of writing (Derrida),
and for themselves) and stories, narrated dreams, (dreams for the other) just how hieroglyphic in principle, moving and shifting in the play of signs, but there is
far do they correspond to the desired problematization of dream-activity? The search nothing behind them, nothing that these signs might refer to.
for an epistemological minimum for the reality of the experience of dreaming is what There is no gaze and no attention: in dreaming, I cannot concentrate my
is actually necessary in the first place, requiring the use of a territorial map of sleep. attention upon an object; there is no factor of the following eye, which we
Mapping turns out to be an important method in the search for connections between experience in reality, to bring us closer or farther from the perceived object. The gaze
what can be said or told of sleep and dreams, seen and experienced, and what is is a feeling of distance, a feeling we use when we move through visible space. This
impossible to describe. feeling is a feeling of the body.
There is no reading: when I was young, I read myself into a frenzy over
A Lack of Reality Dostoevsky, and remember dreaming I had suddenly found one of the authors
What is missing from dreams? Far too much: unknown manuscripts. But as soon as I tried to catch a glimpse of its first page and
There is no self: there is always some transcendental ego, divided into two its title, it suddenly disappeared; the letters dissolved like a painting by Dali and I
(twin) auxiliary selves; the self is missing (unable to recognize itself, to identify was already awake . . .
itself singularly with its own images of the body); if there is a self, then it is more
likely to be schizophrenic, broken apart, rather than a unified whole; Even today, I see the lines of that old-fashioned handwriting as I approach it, and
There is no face: if someone calls our name when we are sleeping, we wake up. how it begins to fall apart, to melt, as the letters flow into one another. I also
Does not this happen because we are only ourselves when we are conscious and remember that this manuscript, these lines, this handwriting, were all so familiar to
awake? When you dream, any and all personal/individual identification is me, as if I had written them myself . . . Is this why I awoke, because I felt I was
impossible; moreover, it is not even necessary. being cheated? I wanted to see myself through Dostoevsky, by writing the famous

...dreams presuppose a perceptive
structure that is divided from the very
beginning: one part is dreaming,
while the other always lingers
close by as a free observer...
1 3
Someone called K. authors manuscript . . . (By the way, this is a typical dream, one often recollected, In this way, one self is within the spatial images that the other self composes, Compare Carl Du Prel,
watches an artist Filosofiya mistiki ili
at work, writing an but Kafka supplies an even more typical example.1) following the first self across the dreams surface at equal speed, never passing dvoystvennost
inscription that reads, ahead or falling behind. One self excludes everything from itself, freeing itself as chelovecheskogo [The
Here lies . . . philosophy of mysticism
But the artist cannot
There is no image of the body. There are no developed motor reactions to dreams an endless chamber, empty but still possible to fill. The other self is within this or the duality of human
finish his work since and their contents; the bodys movements are not gathered but scattered, broken space as a depictive or expressive relation to the transcendental ego-structure of existence] (Moscow,
it is K. who is supposed into bits, impossible to collect into a whole that invests the dream with reality. The sleep. If the one self expands or narrows its zone of influence with spatial 1995), 86: When the
to be lying in the grave subject is divided into
above which the stone thing that makes us into active subjects during the reality of the day is simply effects or the persona of self we are caught in nightmares or we wake up. In any two halves during
has been erected and the missing, namely, kinesthesis, the vast variety of motor reactions to the changing case, these two selves can never coincide. We speak of a twin rather arbitrarily, dreaming, the surface
signature is being of the subjects rupture
written. And as soon constellation of the worlds events. since he is not so much a twin as a supplementary self, without which it would be must serve as the
as this strange witness impossible to dream. Only a divided ego (which is why it is called transcendental) psycho-physiological
of his own death slips threshold, since the
into a spell over dying
The Transcendental Twin can create the possibility for dream-dramatizations and their future narrations. It is organisms psychic
(finding his place in the Dreams are constructed as if they were infused with transcendental subjectivity. important to note that this is a surface of fractures, characteristic of the dreaming alteration serves as
deep burial pit) only One ego, split into two selves, both of them in action. However, this means that subject: the smaller self breaks apart the former (daytime) unity of the waking ego, the reason for the
his head upright, thrown rupture itself.
back into his neck, dreams presuppose a perceptive structure that is divided from the very beginning: opening an operative space for action.3 This surface is also a certain form of
already received by the one part is dreaming, while the other always lingers close by as a free observer, superficial protection, stretched like a membrane, transmitting various sounds and
impermeable deep, his
name drove across the without interfering in any way, keeping everything under control. Perhaps this is our operations. These are muted (extinguished) here, reflected in emotional bursts
stone above in mighty transcendental twin, who, if you like, is the dreams body, the body that participates within the space of dreams.
ornaments. Enraptured
by this sight, he awoke.
in dream-events and simultaneously sees them from the perspective of the other
(Franz Kafka, Ein Traum self, which seems to be disembodied, seeing independently, but ever-present as The idea of motion is extremely important. Dreaming is motion, or in any case, the
[1914/1915], our window of observation.2 Yet we can never grasp our twin in order to separate effect of dreaming comes about through the intersection of two paths, the path of
on the German Project
Gutenberg website, him from himself; we cannot reach out toward him without awakening. the small self and the path of the large Self. One Self, the larger of the two,
gutenberg.spiegel.de/kafka moves along the surfaces boundary, separating sleep and dreams, while the small
/erzaehlg/eintraum.htm.)
Let us make a schematic survey of what I would call the quality of dream-space. self moves along the surfaces curves and fractures, becoming the body of dreaming.
2
A. Mindell, Dao The first Self guards the dream, while the second self participates in the plastic-
shamana: put tela
snovideniya [The
Map 1: pictorial process, even if it is not actually different from the first in nature. One might
shamanic Tao: The path say that both selves compose the structure of the dreams (transcendental) ego. In
self 1
of the dream-body] this case, one can assume that their motion will always be synchronized, as
(Moscow:Transpersonalnij dreams Reality
institut, 1996), 37-40. differentiated as it may seem: How is my body moving? When? Where? Through
what? How slowly, how quickly? How does the angle of observation widen and
self 2
narrow (the level of second cognizance, if you will)?
Crenelated surface
SLEEP

Do I actually see anything?
It is not I who sees.
It is not my sensory ego.
Instead, something
that is the dream itself
is what actually sees.
4
Seemingly: On the Criticism of the Oneiric Cult what appears to be only leads to our waking up or to the object disappearing. The Paul Valry, Cahiers,
vol. 2 (Paris, 1955),
But what is dreaming (Russ., snovidenie)? I might be understood as seeing (videnie) conclusion: any dream-object is given in the optics of seeming. It is because of this 91.
sleep (son), a special kind of vision we make use of when we are within the dream that it can disappear and reappear as no ones sign (a sign for who knows what), a
itself a kind of vision that allows us (and this should be underscored) to move hieroglyph rather than a trace that points toward the body that might have left it
through the dreams formations, environments or spaces all these spatial images behind. Thus, dreams are a screen for the placement of graphical signs or traces,
are still arbitrary for us with unimaginable speed. We see through the strange which call upon the images of any thing or event within us, without actually having
vision of dreams, which allows us to move through the dream depending on the any relationship to these images at all.
direction of our gaze. But in turn, this means that my inner gaze is passive, so
passive that I can easily move through this so-called space of dreams, floating, flying The reason for this dream-semiosis is the dreamers temporary bodily paralysis,
up and away; I undertake unbelievable motions and leaps from one place to since the dreamer is incapable of mimetically playing out what is happening to him
another, but I can also fall down and out. I do not feel any obstacles in the path of while he is asleep. Therefore, the dreamer is also incapable of experiencing without
my gaze, since I see what is. In my gaze itself, there is some kind of game between waking up. Nevertheless, the dream preserves an abbreviated version of a number
the act of vision and what I see, that is played out unbeknownst to me. I see and of physiological functions, although these are only partially abbreviated, one might
all visions illusions are preserved but I see in a strange way: I-see-through-the- say. These signs are organized in a specific way; they can only be understood from
motion-of my-gaze. Yet in the end, movement itself as a principle, as meaning within the dream-mechanism of vision. Because it really is an enigma: how do the
slips through my fingers. Do I actually see anything? It is not I who sees. It is not images of things appear in dreaming as images that astonish us, although there is
my sensory ego. Instead, something that is the dream itself is what actually sees. I probably little room in dreams for astonishment, since dreams are under the sole
cannot even see that I see anything; instead, something is being seen. In this case, rule of randomness and speed? All of this qualitative motion is uninterrupted;
one can call the vision of dreams itself into doubt: it is not what we think it is when dreaming prohibits all stops and breaks.
we remember our dreams and say, In my dream, I saw this and that . . . In
dreaming, we do not see; it only seems to us that we see, when in fact, we see Maybe we should introduce the notion of the residual Ego, the dream-Ego. After all,
nothing at all, when we are not, in fact, supposed to be seeing. What actually it is impossible, too, that we do not see anything in our dreams; we do actually
happens to us when we dream? Are we seeing or are we not seeing? In other words, somehow continue to perceive through the mediation of some strange mechanism
is there any possibility for comparing the ordinary act of vision with the vision of whose place remains undefined. Is this mechanism really no more than the way
dreams? There is an answer. The first and foremost definition of dreamed reality: its dreams are remembered and retold, or might it actually be located in dreams
seeming (i.e., what it seems), meaning that there is nothing in dreams that might themselves, permeating them from the very beginning? Dreams do not allow any
correspond to the significances of the waking visual act. This seeming defines my unity of meaning in the organization of the signs that swarm, cluster, chop, and
relationship to the thing I apparently see, but am I seeing? That is the question. change there. The seen object does not differ fundamentally from the gaze itself.
Really, it always seems to me that I am seeing something, when I fact I do not see The gazes intention comes from the nature of the thing itself. The feeling of cold
anything. Although the dream-seen object seems seen and therefore extant, I do not cannot be separated from the images of cold.4 If we were to derive a rule from this,
see it, since I have no possibility of coming close enough to it to confirm its we might say we only see what we want to see when we dream. Or is the gaze
existence. Seeming is the quality of what exists without being accessible to sensory simply the gaze of the thing itself? If the formula is true that sign S is different from
perception, that which has no existence co-equal to our own. Any effort to approach the thing a, both become equivalent facts of dreaming and it follows that one cannot

The narration of dreams
has no relationship whatsoever
with the experienced
material of dreaming.
5 6
Ibid., 82. cross over to the thing itself. It also means one cannot operate with any structure of hypothesis: dream-visions (sno-videniya) do not exist; there are only interpretations, Compare Carlos
Castaneda, Iskusstvo
understanding that presupposes the necessary connection between S (the sign) and some of which could be called momentary or transitory, while others could be called snovideniya [The art of
a (the thing). In dreaming, we see them as a number of dream-facts, separated from analytical constructs (there is a separation between the form of the dreams content dreaming] (Kiev: Sofia,
1993), 125: Vision
one another. The connection between the two is maintained thanks to the gazes and the form of its practical expression). is the main source of
speed, and thanks to the fact that they simply arise one after the other. However, information; this is
they do not do so in the same order we know when we are conscious and awake. Arbitrations why the dreamer always
talks about his dream-
This dream-connection between images is difficult to call an associative or The narration or re-telling of dreams is a ritual disconnected from dreaming itself; sensations by using the
contiguous link, since there is no link between these facts other than that they relate the dream retold differs from the dream itself through its seeming [to be a dream]. terms of vision.
This is a very accurate
to one another. Nevertheless, they hardly require any sense of their own. The The narrative invests dreaming with the qualities of something real that has taken observation. Perhaps
pseudo-reality [of their images] supplies a significance that they do not have.5 The place, which we take to be the qualities of the dream itself. What does it mean to we do not solve the
problem of the
dreamer is no mediator of images, which are now signs, devoid of any significance. say, I remember that I was in some kind of room and I said this and that? I cannot interpretation of dreams
I see my dreams in full color, yet the animal-bird-insect that my glance grazes by say this without translating the material of dreams into a different order, the order when we speak of the
chance is nothing definite; it might simply be my reaction to the days psychic of conscious and everyday waking existence. The narrative transports the dream out arbitrariness of the
dream-experiences
dregs and little more. of non-linguistic reality into the reality of language. This, in turn, gives rise to the description in terms
vision of dreams (sno-videnie), which never actually existed in any clear and of vision (or other
sensory qualities).
Spatial sensations absent in dreaming: weight, distance, quantity and size. pristine form. The narration of dreams has no relationship whatsoever with the It is merely important
Dreaming-reading means scanning textual signs while dreaming. We must experienced material of dreaming. The dream strictly controls a narrow field of to admit ones own
uncertainty in this
understand, even if only for ourselves, what dreams actually are if we are to hope reality in the process of dreaming and does not give any place to real sensations search for even a
that they exist at all. If we see the impossibility of reading while asleep as an obvious other than in the form of a traces conventionality, since they are missing from it; small bit of the
fact (taking it at face value), the reason will be the unchangeable rule that governs all real sensations are related to another reality, not to the reality of dreams. This is dreams reality, where
one can take a stand
the structural dissipation of iconic signs in dreaming: between them, there is nothing why contact/touch, regarding or experiencing sensations of smell, color, sound, etc. and hold a position.
that resembles any reason for their connection. If this is true, then should not we are never experienced de visu, as something real. There is no third physical
turn our attention to the moment of awakening? Does it not become clear that we surface to provide a point of contact between my body and the reality of dreaming.
wake up only after having already interpreted what we have just dreamed? We Yet nevertheless, we say that we see when we dream.6 But do we really see? Is
dreamt nothing, but while we were asleep, we experienced unusual states, which this the hidden arbitrariness of waking consciousness, which has been admixed as
we called dreams, knowing full well that we did not dream them. But maybe were a imaginative guarantee? Do we see als ob (as if) without actually seeing anything,
just dreaming. Maybe there is some field of momentary interpretations of what was or do we see something through our second attention, with the faculty that dreams
experienced that does not correspond to any vision in sleeping, since it only exists do not control? In fact, a part of real sensations abbreviated if you will is
as a sign of this momentary interpretation and nothing else. It is as if we lived by already enough to stimulate the dreaming metabolism (changing the rate of
the energies of movement while we were dreaming. But in the moment of waking, breathing, the heartbeat, traces of emissions, etc.)
the dream is suddenly decked out and filled in with imagery. These images not only
are no part of the dream itself, but they also express some kind of intention or
motivation based in the waking world. Perhaps it is possible to make the following

If, in a dream-moment, we seem
to see that we are standing in the rain,
this rain cannot be related to anything
in the outer world, since it is simply a sign
for rain, pointing at itself (we experience
the sign as rain and not the rain itself).
This and That Vision develops as the compensatory haptic channel of sense (to see is to touch
Is not everything we see in the paintings of Magritte a carefully executed repetition something at a distance). Consequently, any naming gesture retains the thing at
of the rules by which dreams construct their reality? For the surrealist experience, the tip of the pointing finger as a reduced physical gesture. This reduced form of
using the images and forms of dreaming was nothing out of the ordinary. However, contact is always present in any visual act. Thus, when Magritte tells you that you
Magritte never actually comments on the problem of dream-reality, even if his can touch something, what do you do with the fact that, when reaching out, you
paintings depictions occasionally look like fragments of the dream-flow: objects also touch something that is impossible to touch? You touch one thing (a tower),
that levitate (instead of gravitate), the traversal motion of perception aside-from- but its outlines, the image itself, is inscribed upon the cone-like avenue next to it,
what-was-seen instead of the accustomed motion of the gaze-from-what-was-seen, crossing the city, corresponding exactly to the towers contours and textures. It is
a total disqualification of the space-time structure, unexpected transformations, the possible to say, This is a tower! but it is also possible to say, This is an avenue!
coexistence of incompatibility, reversal, substituting and transgressing the In reality, there are simply only two cones, which organize the field of vision. We
dimensions of figures and things. Does not this come quite close to the dreams say, The tower is similar to the avenue, and the avenue is like the tower! By
simulation of reality? The only thing that is missing is the dynamic of dreaming as embracing our receiving body with brackets, Magritte negates the significance of the
a process. If, in a dream-moment, we seem to see that we are standing in the rain, first touch, transforming the act of naming into something random, into an event
this rain cannot be related to anything in the outer world, since it is simply a sign that is nearly miraculous. Only here, the miracle is broken by the intrusion of the
for rain, pointing at itself (we experience the sign as rain and not the rain itself). dream-experience of disunity between names and things. It is easy to see the
Furthermore, the sensations of rain (e.g., moisture, raindrops on your head, etc.) attacks direction: our confidence lies in the fact that by controlling words, we
are not necessary: this sign forms a discrete rainy unity, which we cannot confuse control and touch reality.
with any other, since all things in dreaming are scattered at random, devoid of any
cause and effect. Any attempt to look at something more clearly leads to a There is, however, a simple argument against confusing the perception of dreams
transformation into something completely different. This transformation does not with mentalist, waking perception: that which Magritte represents as images does
take place according to the principle of similarity. Images pass in such rapid not imitate the state of dreaming simply by virtue of the fact that it does not control
succession that they leave no hope of comprehending their connections. As the moment of switching from reality into dreams. Instead, it has been arrested in
neighboring nameless signs, they are both divided and soldered together in a phase when it is still impossible to switch the images themselves; instead, they
conglomeration. One sign replaces the other according to certain rules, which are are doubled. Strictly speaking, one cannot observe any disintegration; nothing loses
hardly akin to those used by a unified language. Reality does not reveal itself to me its boundaries or takes the others place, no thing is mixed up with any other. Yet
in what I see, but in what I can touch; it does not update itself in me in a distal one can make the objection: is this really the essence of all of Magrittes imaginative
way, if the predistal mechanism of perception is not already in operation. I receive experiments? Was he really just trying to say, Your much-praised reality is actually
distance through proximity. In the same way, one should never forget that every no more than the product of perceptive belief (Merleau-Ponty). In this case, it turns
gesture has its own physical parameters, and that every ostensive state is a gesture. out that the paintings of Magritte work to convert any and all mimetic language into
It is the accustomed gesture with which we confirm our own being in the world; the the prescience of dreamed mentalism (into little pictures), thus delivering a blow
little phrase This is . . . confirms the presence of the things themselves as real in to all our stereotypes and perceptive habits (placing them in brackets). As such,
terms of quality. In order to recognize the reality of one thing or another, we need it transfers the action of pictorial means from the imaginary depth of time-space
to touch it. coordinates onto the plane of the dream-screen. The need for any body disappears

You say: This is Ivan Ivanovich,
he drinks vodka, and this is not
Ivan Ivanovich, but a locomotive;
Ivan Ivanovich is similar to the locomotive,
but no, he is not really a locomotive,
but a chair; is he similar to a chair?
no, hes just a chair.
7
as soon as the process of understanding is disrupted. Indeed, the effect of the name Dreams collapse the order of ostensive statements: in dreaming, there is no such G.Bateson. Steps
to an Ecology of Mind.
on its thing is built according to the model of correlating the living body to external thing as this. As we will admit, we cannot establish anything in the quality of Ballantine Books, New
reality. existence while we are asleep; asleep, I see that there is rain rather than this is York, 1972, p. 422.
rain; while this is something I know, something that I see, but the meta-
Across many long (dull) pages of repetitive thought, Wittgenstein posed one and the communication framework (Gregory Bateson) that would allow me to transmit it as
same question: When you say that you see this, are you telling what you are message for the Other7 has been broken. We cannot estimate the probability of the
seeing? It might actually be true that you see because and through the word itself. dreams truth-value until we find ourselves within its boundaries. What is more, the
You say, I see this tree. And I respond by asking, But how can you rule out the indexical (or ostensive) procedures that separate us from what we see do not work
fact that this tree is not completely or strictly a tree, but only a certain sound or here, since we see thanks to the fact that we see that which is most visible, but not
mental picture, applying itself to your gesture when you say that this is a tree? The from the side; in dreaming, there is no distance between that which is seen and that
game of language begins the moment you negotiate with others successfully, which is seeing. This is why the dream is much closer to us than any image
agreeing that you all will now call this by the name of tree. Moreover, you admit visualized in the state of waking. But let us imagine that your gesture of authenticity
that your gesture now makes sense, since it is executed with the name itself: this (we will now call it that) is excluded from your description of the world. In other
(is) a tree-name, this (is) the tree (a tree, that [is]) . . . Everything I touch with my words, you now cannot point to what you see and say, This is . . . If you cannot
this-gesture assumes the nature of existence. By saying here-this, or there-that and do this, you sink into a dream or poetic fantasy, which allows you to handle words
here-this, I am establishing an unmediated connection between the world and its without worrying about their authenticity or reality, i.e., about the fact that they
name. I am simply saying that this is here, confirming myself as something existent. are related to the things they designate. You say: This is Ivan Ivanovich, he drinks
I need a thing in order to be sure of my own existence and not of the existence of vodka, and this is not Ivan Ivanovich, but a locomotive; Ivan Ivanovich is similar to
the thing. I cannot use my own body to denote the world. Question: Does this mean the locomotive, but no, he is not really a locomotive, but a chair; is he similar to a
saying that this exists? Is it there because I simply point at it or does it exist as chair? no, hes just a chair. Ivan Ivanovich exists in the limits of the mobile and
something that simply has the name of tree? What us does Wittgenstein tell us? He variable field of his own predicates as a name that has lost its relation to a certain
says that we cannot simply see the tree, we can see-how, i.e., we see what through individual of the masculine sex, Russian in nationality. Instead, Ivan Ivanovich is a
how; how always anticipates what. But this means that the name of things always certain signal, which the text sends to us to imply that the game is beginning:
already exist; furthermore, our gesture exists as a reaction to the pre-defined name everything that occurs here could refer to Ivan Ivanovich, but on the other hand, it
of the world as something that has already been received. We cannot produce our does not necessarily have to. There could be a connection to Ivan Ivanovich if we
gesture without breaking the rules of the game, without breaking the rules of ourselves actually want to receive the significance of a statement, but it can also be
existence that govern one world or another. The gesture breaks the rules of the world nothing because the name itself is empty and possesses zero value. As such, it is
or, on the contrary, their precise enactment. We say, This is a tree, but in looking open for any values, superimposed one upon the other. In view of this, it becomes
at the same object, we can say, This is not a tree; it is a porcupine. Or that this tree impossible to imagine the existence of a character like Ivan Ivanovich, since he does
is actually more similar to the animal-porcupine than it is to itself. We are poets, not actually exist. He does not exist because any hint at the gesture of authenticity
creators of metaphors, subtle comparisons, and epic images. is absent.

Dreaming is superficial, since it exists
on the boundary of the passage from
waking reality to sleep and has no other
function than to be a means of transport,
what I call a bathyscaph in the depths
of dreaming.
8
Didier Anzieu, Ivan Ivanovich has no features except those which are permitted for him to have in wrapping us up in itself, and separating us from its experience. And this shell is
Plenka snovideniya: those actions that they accomplish by themselves, or in actions that affect them. created as we sleep, as if sleep itself served only this purpose, to replenish and
Sovremennaya teoriya
snovideniy [The film Thus, Ivan Ivanovich is a marionette of events, which do not actually happen to him regrow the psyches protective film, much of which is eroded each waking day.
of dream: Contemporary but occur as if he were really Ivan Ivanovich. I would also like to note that the We might imagine observing the reality of sleep from outside (REM): the human
theories of dreams]
(Moscow: Refl-buk, actions that occur around Ivan Ivanovich tell us that he does not exist, but because being is asleep; we hear him breathe; we see that his eyes are closed; we see that
1999), 204. we cannot refuse him his existence (even if it is imagined), we say, This is really he does not wake up; we assume he sleeps, perchance to dream. We know that all
funny, but its funny because its impossible; its a game theyre playing with us, not people must sleep, that we cannot survive insomnia for long, that we cannot
even a game, but worse a situation of insulting absurdity! This is why Ivan manage without sleep. We desire sleep, we want to sleep; after a deep and
Ivanovich is not a face, but simply an object, and an object in its own right, that is, prolonged sleep, we feel well-rested, ready to be awake, to expend energy in
extant in its inhuman dimension. We play with an object; its name is Ivan volumes extraordinary in comparison with those used in sleeping. Sleep, if it is
Ivanovich. sufficiently deep, makes it possible for us to economize and to accumulate energy
for the following waking day. Thus, the first and distinctly examined opposition is
Prescribed to the subject, the action counteracts and destroys the subjects reality between sleep (as energy-saving) and waking (as the expenditure of energy).
with the improbability of the accomplished action (an old woman who falls or jumps Relying on my own experience, I could say that dream makes it possible for me to
out of the window). fall asleep, but also to be awake. This motion goes in two directions: first, dream
brings me down into the depths of the dream-process; second, it brings me back
SURFACE AND DEPTH and I surface. Here, I use what is probably one of the most successful and common
metaphors for sleep, one adopted by many researchers, namely the metaphor of
The Oneironautic Model sinking and rising, or diving and surfacing. Does not sleep in and of itself represent
While depth belongs to sleep, the surface belongs to dreaming. These are their this mental reservoir, which possesses two important dimensions: the dimension of
domains of being as phenomena of existential life. Dreaming is superficial, since it depth and the dimension of surface? It is possible to imagine sleep as an aqueous
exists on the boundary of the passage from waking reality to sleep and has no other medium into which we submerge each time, an element we suddenly leave for the
function than to be a means of transport, what I call a bathyscaph in the depths of dry land of conscious waking. Sleep as an aqueous medium: We are the
dreaming. Delivering us to sleep and bringing us back to waking life, it moves like oneironauts of dreaming.
an elevator between the lower floors and the upper decks the authentic migration
of dreaming within the inexhaustible regions of sleep. The relationship of dreaming Map 2: surface
to sleep can be experienced as the relationship of the part to its whole, but this part ==============================
is not organic to the whole; its properties are completely different. Moreover, it both guardare pre-surface: the domain of dream-activity
assists and prevents this whole from becoming night. One might say that the (diving or rising to the surface)
prova colore
superficial ego is actually the authentic ego of dreams: it hears, sees, reads, exists ==============================
in dreaming. Developing Freuds ideas about the shell or skin of the dream-process,
digitale deep sleep (total submersion, dead sleep)
Didier Anzieu introduces the concepts of the dream-ego and the surface-ego.8 We ==============================
can speak of a shield provided by this surface-ego. It encapsulates our state, the depths

Let us assume that the dream is a hole in the fabric
of sleep and that deep sleep always successfully seals
or patches this hole whatever might be said about
the dream-experiences that destroy it and force us
to leave, floating up slowly to its surface, preparing
to awaken. The dream-hole, formed in the process
of floating to the surface, grows wider and wider,
until it reaches the same proportions as reality,
and already we find ourselves in another world.
9
Sndor Ferenczi, Sleep is liquid and plastic, a permeable medium, into which we sink or submerge orthodox Freudianism; most importantly, it questions the universal value of the
Versuch einer Genital-
theorie (Vienna-Leipzig- (by the way, language has preserved a great number of diverse indications on this Oedipal complex in forming the human being. Instead of the majestic idol of
Zurich, 1924), 30-31. score). But is this really a question of dreams? Are dreams simply instruments of Oedipus the father, the totem, the ancestor-anthropophagus, devouring and
submersion and emersion, a submarine means of transportation (circular like a devoured, burdening memory with the scene of bloody orgies, there is the figure of
bathyscaph, for an example)? There must, however, be some intermediate the embryo in its trans-sexual essence, still peacefully at rest in the maternal
chambers or airlocks (such as those that make it possible for deep-sea divers to (amniotic) fluid, like a fish in water, in a psycho-biogenetic paradise of life.
regulate their passage from deep pressure to surface pressure). We sleep not in Instead of the supremacy of the paternal vertical line, the erection, the will to
order to see dreams; we sleep only so as to store up necessary energy, to relieve the violence, there are ecstatic curves: the rigid geometry of Freuds pyramidal topic is
tensions of the day, to cleanse ourselves so we can prepare for future trials and replaced by vibrating, dancing, flexible lines of the qualitative geometry of the living.
tribulations. As obvious data, the phenomenon of deep sleep is a given, but I am Instead of the inclination to death which is, in the end, a tendency toward the
saying only that this phenomenon lends significance to our existence as sleepers. rest of the inorganic, to dead nature, as well as the growing fear of the castrator-
Two boundaries, one of them internal between sleep and dreaming another fathers knife there is the organic, from the living to the living, not from the living
external, between dreams and waking reality. On the one hand, the very process of to death, to the special primary state of elemental life in the maternal womb. Instead
falling asleep or sinking into sleep is divided, since sleep is something is larger of the great drying-out and icing-over of the earth, there is the humidity of fog and
than dreaming, and dreaming is larger than sleep. Let us assume that the dream is the aqueous heat of the ancient world ocean of Thalassa. Instead of standing
a hole in the fabric of sleep and that deep sleep always successfully seals or patches upright, there is floating and flight, soaring; instead of the prohibition of contact (and
this hole whatever might be said about the dream-experiences that destroy it and the domination of optical effects in the paternal sphere of sensuality), there is an
force us to leave, floating up slowly to its surface, preparing to awaken. The dream- accentuation and even fetishization of the haptic form of sensuality (peace as a
hole, formed in the process of floating to the surface, grows wider and wider, until native medium); instead of anesthesia, there is synesthesia; instead of articulated
it reaches the same proportions as reality, and already we find ourselves in another speech, where all processes of predication and utterance are governed in the name
world. of father, there is agrammatism and the pre-genital muttering of the maternal name.
Ferenczis phylo-ontogenetic model of sexuality makes it possible to topically
Regressio in uterus. The maternal body of sleep. The Mutterleib complex. understand that submersion into ecstasy-sleep reveals the pathetic form that is
Furthermore, each of these boundaries is a screen (in relation to dreaming, sleep is literally buried in the deepest layers of the psyche, projected and screened as the
always a screen). But what is this sleep-screen? If sleep is something that lies attraction to the maternal body.
outside the dreams boundaries, how do we pass into it? We probably project all our
experiences, feelings, misunderstandings, and the trials of the previous day (the To put it differently, the essence of ecstasy does not only lie in the return to the
energy left over from the remains of the day), attempting to get rid of them in this maternal bosom; first and foremost, it consists in reviving the remnant sensations
way. Is this the letter of desire through which our dream is written? of the earliest living environment, which is oceanic. Therefore mother, or mother as
Mutterleib, maternal womb, must be read as symbol or by the partial token of an
In his Theory of Genitality (1923),9 the psychoanalyst Sndor Ferenczi, one of ancient ocean, but not vice versa. At all stages of its sexual development, the
Freuds closest associates, developed an idea that runs counter to the spirit of human being moves in three biographies: the historical biography (as a personal

You can see the event, but you already
see it in a way it did not take place; you
see the miracle of transformation; pure
energy presents you with the gift of the
image, but at the same time, its
relationship to the image itself is
absolutely neutral.
10
Ibid., 84. history of the human beings life), the ontogenetic biography (genital formation), and space through which we move, although we move through the energy of these
the phylogenetic biography (formation of the earth). This motion takes place as if psychic odds and ends. What kind of energy is this? I would answer as follows:
along three lines, independent of each other, but which reflect the same event at In our waking state, we expend a great deal of energy in reaction to unimportant
each stage of their formation in different and varied symbolism. None of these events; these events do not only take place all around us but also occur within.
biographies is developed continuously in the evolutionary sequence of the stages of When we fall asleep, we emancipate ourselves from all those daytime tensions, but
change, but by means of catastrophic events, which repeat the injury of copulation- this liberation takes place through specific means: they are no longer supported by
birth if we may use the term catastrophe in the Lamarckian sense our bodies; sleeping or falling asleep, the body departs into temporary paralysis,
leaving full or integral responsiveness, which consists in the fact that each
the act of conception and the simultaneous act of copulation do not only admix the experience and each sensation inevitably demands physio-motoric participation
individual type (birth) and the consecutive type (the oceans desiccation and shallowing), from the entire organism. To put it differently: we react to our daytime experiences
but also interfuse even earlier catastrophes from the time when life first appeared. Thus, in a unified or integral fashion, which is why the energy that we use manifests itself
the experience of orgasm does not only represent peace in the Mutterleib, in the womb, as something connected to physical influence. In contrast, when we fall asleep and
existence acquiescing in one friendly medium; instead, it also represents peace before the our body no longer takes part in the processes of connecting the forthcoming energy
appearance of life, in other words, the peace of death in inorganic existence.10 of experience, the energies of experience and sensation become partial; they no
longer make use of the bodys help in connecting or bringing together the energy of
Again, Ferenczi is brave enough to make the following affirmation: the experiences experience in a certain image or in articulated speech: psychic odds and ends are
of sleep, hallucination, or ecstasy are identical (by analogy) to the state that a cluster of disconnected energy; entering sleep, this energy gives rise to dreams.
bioanalysis defines as the instant of orgasm or coitus. Thus, this flowing, labile,
polymorphous, slippery screen-image is primary. It cannot be gripped by the When we fall asleep, we submerge; this submersion is marked by the liberation of
transfer into any sensual-visual equivalent, remaining afloat in milky diffusion, still psychic remainders from their connectivity to images; this always happens; this is
no more and no less than a maternal screen. Clearly, this image-memory projects how we fall asleep. I do not want to say that this psychic remainder is the reason
itself regressively onto those mental, sensual layers of human experience that it for dreams and their plastic-pictorial quality; instead, the psychic remainder lends
cannot reproduce on its own. This floating, hovering, suspended image of the one its energy to this plasticity. If, for an example, you fall asleep and still see some
is capable of absorbing any and all differences (distinguishable qualities); thus, it images of daytime consciousness as you submerge, you do not see them as they
is also able to appropriate everything that has been fragmented or disconnected. were in reality (if you see them at all); they become kaleidoscopic and intermixed,
replacing one another and appearing anew in dependence on your smallest desire
Odds and Ends to remind yourself of this event or that in order to reenact it. You can see the event,
Perhaps the odd and ends or the psychic remains of the day consist in preformed but you already see it in a way it did not take place; you see the miracle of
signs of reality or of the waking world, toward whose energy the experience of transformation; pure energy presents you with the gift of the image, but at the same
dreaming is oriented. This psychic remainder is not an image; instead, it is energy, time, its relationship to the image itself is absolutely neutral. This is the first
infiltrating the dream in the guise of imagery, thanks to which external reality fundamental difference: permeating and even creating dreams, psychic odds and
confirms itself in dreaming and occupies its territories there, becoming the inner ends are marked by the division between energies and images; energy is neutral

...permeating and even creating dreams,
psychic odds and ends are marked
by the division between energies
and images; energy is neutral but
the image is desired.
12
11
How many forgotten but the image is desired. Therefore, any image can use this available energy, since the essence of the event. It says no more and no less than the event itself. The Consider, for example,
dreams there are! Here the notion
it remains disconnected. It is possible to say that dreams internally organize external telegram is a unified chord of the event, a condensation of languages essential of automatic writing
and now, leaning to
the side slightly, I begin experience, taking into account the energy freed up by the temporary paralysis of event-minimum.12 Of course, this rough and blurry image of dreaming needs to be in the surrealist praxis
to relax the repressive of Andr Breton.
body and brain. fleshed out; our immediate memories are filled in with things we have not yet
action of consciousness,
as dream-flakes begin remembered. But what kind of image is this? Is it, perhaps, simply a screen (this is 13
Compare Jean-Bertrand
to rise upward from Motion through the space of dreams is characterized by a surprising rapidity, probably more accurate)? This note on the screen is the first note. But how can Pontalis, Snovidenie kak
different depths, obyekt [Dreaming as an
sedimented in the
because the entire organic system of dreams is in a state of infinite equilibrium. This this be possible? The screen already needs to be present from the very beginning, object] In Sovremennaya
dream-activity of the balance cannot be disrupted in any way. In other words, no matter what happens as something absolutely clean and maternal, constantly signaling the fact that any teoriya snovideniy
past, floating up to what [Contemporary theory
in the dream, its system remains stable, so mobile in its dimensions and speeds dream is a kind of pan-human regression to a primal unification with the maternal of dreams] (Moscow:
I am today, to me,
here. This depth is that mobility will be the manifestation of impossible equilibrium. All of this is true body.13 It is true that the dreamer projects his desires onto the first screen; each Refl-buk, 1999), 167:
giddying and monstrous More than anything else,
of dreams, with but one correction, but not with respect to awakening as the dream is actually a projection onto something, beaming desire into the space where
in its volume and in dreams make an effort
its wealth of material. disruption of the dreams balance and the ensuing passage to another type of all wishes have always come true. This screens color range is milky-gray, just like at an impossible union
Yet as soon as equilibrium, namely that of being awake. These two systems of balance cannot be the mothers breast pressed flat, seen through the eyes of an infant; this is the time with the mother,
I remember a single attempting to preserve
dream from the past,
equated to one another, but they communicate through energy and small, inert when all dreams come true, a time that cannot be repeated. Time before time; the the indivisible unity,
I fall into another, ducts.11 time of immortality. returning to the space
as if the continual of an earlier time.
disappearance and
dissolution of dreams THE DREAMERS CODEX Block B 14
This question, which
stemmed from the strata was initially asked in the
2. Confirming the details (second notation). development of the praxis
of the unconscious,
which you once I would recommend the use of three types of notation: telegraphy, supplementation The next moment. It is necessary to check and confirm the dreams notation, using and theory of dreams,
experienced, forgot, (confirming the details) and, of course, narration, dream-telling as a stage of whatever else was retained, even the foggy material of dreaming. It follows that it probably first appeared
repressed, and now with the ideas and
there are only flakes
dream-writing. would be good to write it down again, any way you like, in detail. Rewriting is the observations of Pyotr
and dregs. This praxis introduction of unnecessary details, those that actually seem to exist although they Uspensky: Is it possible
of remembering to perform conscious
Block A have so far received only scant attention. In effect, this is the formation of another actions while asleep?
forgotten dreams is
a visit to the graveyard 1. Telegraphy (first notation). level of attention (realization) in dreams; in relation to the first type of notation, This also attempts to
of ships. Is this praxis answer the question of
First, the random notation of dreams; you have to do this as quickly as possible. which we might call scattered, the second type of notation gives rise to a focused,
known? Is it necessary? the degree to which we
Can it be useful? This speed writing down what was seen quickly attempts to preserve image- conscious form of attention, which is not simply added onto the notes of the past can control our own
unity despite the fact that details are left out. There can be no unity of dream- but displaces them completely. Not so long ago, this so-called second attention was behavior once we have
reached a state we
perception (while you are writing). Too many images disappear; the possibility of used in the praxis of lucid dreaming.14 But what can this praxis be applied to? To actually chose as
finding any answer to the questions at hand falls away almost immediately. What the telling of story itself? Or to specify a number of real details within the unreal something involuntary
and completely
actually happened? Why do I have such mixed feelings? Why I am so confused? The space of sleep, in order to unfold more fully the accessories or stage props of uncontrollable. After all,
note or message is not very different from a telegram. A minimum message for the dreams? At this point, we encounter a second screen speckled by traces or we are supposed to be
relaxing, not working.
maximum event-effect. The telegram is eventful; it transmits an abridged variant of meaningless signs. What does the dreamer see in this first moment, unseeing? We Lucid dreaming is a

Before interpretation begins, dreams are
a collage, a collection of senseless signs,
even separated into letters, glued together
from the splinters of visual or plastic
imagery.
15
dream within a dream, do not even see hieroglyphs, but some remainder of writing, eroded inscriptions, is the fact that can be understood post facto through retardations and increases, Compare Ludwig
a stop in the dream- Binswanger, Bytie-v-
flow. The dream-frame fragments, details, numbers, blotches of light and color, dashes, dots, geometrical whereas the effect of rapidity is instant; everything either changes or remains mire [Being-in-the-
stops in the place that figures, or letters. In this sense, one can speak of the exclusive value of the letter unchanged. world] (Moscow: Refl-
interests us; endowed buk, 1999), 95-107.
with various highly
in psychoanalysis (Lacan). Before interpretation begins, dreams are a collage, a
accurate optical collection of senseless signs, even separated into letters, glued together from the Time-space. If, for an example, we speak of flying or falling, as Ludwig Binswanger
instruments, we are splinters of visual or plastic imagery. The speckled screen is in fact the many- does in his famous work, we are actually speaking about what happens to the
able to examine the
things we were unable layered material from which dreams are made. We need to allow the scribbles of dream itself, and not to ourselves. More precisely, we are talking about what
to do before; childhood to cover this screen, just as we need to allow for the regressive character happened to us but as the cause of the dream, not its effect.15 The theme of
furthermore, we can
control the dream itself, of the dream-flow at all times. This screen is an interface, a passageway from the existential-experiential ontology serves as an occasion for the image of the physical
creating new primal, maternal screen to two others, to the narrative screen and the imaginative plunge.
possibilities for seeing,
offhandedly precluding
screen; it is a membrane, selectively permeable, filtering information. This screen
any random order allows signs to make themselves known on the surfaces of other, later screens as Sedimentation. Here, we are speaking of traces the meaning of which has been lost
of the dream-images images in perfect plasticity. completely (although for some unknown reason our dreams are filled to the brim
unfolding. See P. D.
Uspensky, Novaya with these superfluous details). These traces accumulate as sediments
model vselennoy [A Block C secreting, depositing, crystallizing, and consolidating linguistic, visual, or any other
new model of the
cosmos] (Moscow: 3. Narration, dreaming-telling (third notation). kinds of images of sensation (phrases, expressions, singular words, numerals,
Izdatelstvo This is an examination of the dream-material with the help of narrative instruments inscriptions, human figures, landscapes, spaces, even individual letters, etc.).
Chernysheva, 1993),
280-320. The
that might enable us to relate what we saw to the story of our lives, reinforcing them This is a test of the necessity for studying the dream itself and for composing it as
argument for lucidity there as content. By applying all of realitys possible characteristics, which we a story.
is defended with experience as normal waking reality, we turn the dream into a story, i.e., suffuse
particular success
and energy in Patricia the dream with meanings both open and hidden whereby it is transformed into a Configuration. The isolation of a separate block of figures, human and superhuman,
Garfield, Tvorcheskoe memory. We try to clarify the dreams details, and in doing so, we need to introduce mysterious and intelligible, bodies, poses, positions, gestures, the identification of
snovidenie [Creative
dreaming] (St. a number of criteria. faces, grimaces, and all forms of mimicry accessible to dreaming. In this case, we
Petersburg: Evraziya, understand the figure as a plastic image that clearly expresses the relationships
1996) and Stephen
LaBerge. Osoznannoe
Hodology, or a lesson on the path. We are really talking about the way dreams are between the separated fragments of sleep that allow you to imagine events that took
snovidenie [Lucid experienced in terms of space and time depth, the configuration of this dream- place while you were asleep. The recognition of figures is part of understanding their
Dreaming] (Kiev: Sofia, space or that time-flow. Maybe this space needs to be described by this or that ontological status within the dream.
1996).
movement, something one might call a path drawn through the space of dreams. It
is better to sketch this path immediately (after awakening) in the form of an Affect. This is probably the most important moment, since the dreamer makes
orientational map, noting the special features of spatial sensations, its places, its contact with the fragments of his own physical experience; after all, not every
main characters, its rapidity of displacement. One should remember that, in sensory relationship can call forth a corresponding reaction. Pay close attention to
dreaming, there is no speed, only rapidity. This is an important distinction: speed your reactions, as you touch isolated words, events and effects, probably in order to

Desire cannot reveal itself completely
in a form accessible to vision (analysis),
but the material is organized in such
a way that dreaming gives desire
the possibility of revealing itself
to the utmost.
16
Sigmund Freud, fix the sensation (the feeling of touch, of flight, of oppression, pressure, heaviness, centralizing instance? Do not the notions of bricolage (Lvi-Strauss), and the
Vvedenie v psikhoanalis
[Introduction and so on, making note and developing the situation at will). Here, you will see the kaleidoscope (Walter Benjamin) play the same roles as Freuds rebus or Lacans
to psychoanalysis] important moments of transitional psychoanalytical dream-work, leading to the crossword, if dreams are the splinters and dregs of daily living? Consequently,
(Moscow: Lektsin,
1989), 309.
open motivation of sexual desire. dream-work operates so as to allow the dreamer to see or, at least, retell his dream
(sno-videnie), separating himself from his own vision, becoming a dreamer in the
Block D sense of a real subject, in command of his own vision. This subject sees objects at
4. Dreaming as work (the principle of dramatization). a distance from the ordinary space he is accustomed to, observing and studying
The goal of dreaming is to make wishes come true. Every dream must represent them, and then compiling a story using these images. If the goal is to reveal the
wishes (desires) as though they had already been fulfilled.16 Desire cannot reveal hidden, and any dream must become self-evident or visible in its fullness, then
itself completely in a form accessible to vision (analysis), but the material is commentary-interpretations, the story, and all analysis actually develop a special
organized in such a way that dreaming gives desire the possibility of revealing itself sort of vision, impossibly near and impossibly distant to what is being seen, a vision
to the utmost. Dreams disturb the surfacing of desire in its most obvious form of sharpness and focus, enlargement, etc. Is dream-work really just a form of work
through the threshold of censorship (a psychic filter of sorts). Yet there will always with memory-techniques? And how can it be otherwise, if all memories are but
be room for compromise between the censorship of dreaming and its material. We dreams, and dreams, insofar as we recognize them as such, are but memories of
find this compromise in the dependence on the level of deformation/non- what we once dreamed but have already forgotten. Processing the data of dream-
deformation of authentic dream-thoughts. Dreaming (sno-videnie [dream-seeing]) is memory (without mnemonic rigging) this is what psychoanalysis is in the end.
not dreaming (in the sense that we say that we have seen a dream); instead, it is But really, what is this memory? A whole new order of questions.
work. As such, it inviolably follows its own rules, laws, and techniques. It is only
after this work has been completed that dreams are ready. Nothing (that was not Censorship is a mysterious operation. Why are dreams, which we see as a free
anything) becomes a dream. In the initial stage of the dreams appearance as raw game, still subject to censorship? Or maybe we are talking about the fact that any
thought-material, its dependence on the remains of the day is still far too strong; attempt to present something unclear figuratively, with a certain visual clarity,
its energy can only complete its passage to the subsequent stages through dream- always works to deform the material itself, since no form of psychic material can
work, recoding its elements (encrypting obvious meaning) dreaming as a ever be translated into an imaginative-visual picture with the possibility of
rebus, a collection of Egyptian hieroglyphic signs; dreaming is also what Freud completeness. But let us agree that all this raises the question of desire; after all,
called ready. Dreams as a rebus? A constellation of senseless and purposefully desire can never be completely fulfilled, not even in dreaming; even here, it only
deformed signs, which need to be deciphered so that the key to the code can be expresses itself partially. Consequently, censorship fulfills the function of a control-
found the complete and exhaustive hegemony of commentary over text-notation. impediment and only presents desire in those plastic forms in which it can be
Does not this mean that we, as dreamers, always retell our dreams in processed presented. Freud says that dreams do not know no and do not feel
versions that have been worked on, and does not this also mean that dreaming contradictions, absurd situations, and the senselessness of what they see; in the
simply manipulates various odds and ends, a raw, arbitrary collection of facts from propositions that recount the dreams contents, all forms of cause and effect, all
the waking life of day? But does not this also mean that dreaming is nothing more logico-grammatical attributes (if . . . then, when, because, consequently, it
than yet another state of consciousness, albeit devoid of the super-egos rigid follows that, this is why . . . etc.) refuse to play any function necessary to logic.

Freud was a draftsman of schemes,
not a cartographer: he often tells us that
the dreamer is not sleeping but working
in his sleep, that dreams are not already
present but made, developed, produced,
and so on. Without effort and labor, what
Freud calls dream-work is impossible.
17
See, for examp Thanks to censorship, dreams come to a full stop: the tragedy is transformed into a Map 3 seeing retelling
le, Jacques Derrida, (resistance)
Freyd i stsena pisma drama, the unbroken, continual dramatization of the experience of dreaming. This
[Freud and the scene is Freuds passion-play.17
of writing] in Pismo
i razlichie [Writing and
difference]. (Moscow: Block E
Akademicheskii proekt, 5. A unified map of sleep.
2000), 319-369.
Let us compile a unified map of the experience of dreaming (not only mapping
space but, as we said before, sleeps entire territory) a map that, in the final (repression)
analysis, will provide us with what is most important, namely, the locations of the screen 1 retelling retelling
sensitive-emotive zones of our dream: fear, love, joy, pain, despair, hope, doubt, ("white screen") ("speckled screen") ("story")
caution, rancor that entire endless series of existential causes, indicated by bodily
sign-indices (all of them pseudo-motoric): falling, rising, flying, running,
compression, suffocation/strangulation, self-destruction, etc. All of these
experiences are so sharp they pass from being mere sensations to becoming
affective states, bypassing any and all depictive representation (and whats more,
the symptomatics of symbolic reinforcement). On this map, we should include all
the results of our careful work with the blocks above. For an example, if we see the
text (double-writing) of dreaming as a container for the redundancy of meaning,
the operation of disassociating (rendering senseless) its contents through analysis screen 3
will consist in setting rules for the order of signs used by the dream. There is not ("representation")
one map; there are many, and they are all organized differently. The subtlety of
interpretation consists in their relative superimposition. Freud was a draftsman of schemes, not a cartographer: he often tells us that the
dreamer is not sleeping but working in his sleep, that dreams are not already
present but made, developed, produced, and so on. Without effort and labor, what
Freud calls dream-work is impossible. First of all, dreams are the fulfillment of
desire. Second, dreams consist of obvious and hidden meanings; desire is hidden,
while its linguistic expressions are obvious as the dreams content. Third, the
dream makes sense, but this sense is hidden and demands interpretation, since we
face the dream as a rebus or a charade (Egyptian hieroglyphs), hiding itself from
the dreamer. Freud did not tolerate anything senseless; he was always only
interested in searching for sense as meaning. But this means that he viewed the
dreamers story as a coded message, encrypted through a wealth of meanings that

Absurdity is that portion of the
experienced dream that cannot pass
into narration or clear representation,
if we understand these two categories
as analytical forms that clothe dreams
in significance.
18
For an attempt are inevitably motivated by the dreamers life story. The motive is what explains the This does not mean that signs and their meanings are brought into correspondence;
to make critical sense
of using the experience causal connections in the series of thoughts-desires; it is what weaves them it only describes the organization of the sign-field as a whole. Signs form a figure of
of dreams in creativity, together in a unified field of expression. What do we see when it comes to Freud? desire; as a result, we do not receive simply significance, but an entire order of
see Aleksey Remizov,
Sny i predsone
First and foremost, he refuses to interpret dreams as a separate reality; either the truths. Significance, that figure of desire, even of truth, is the organizational order of
[Dreams and pre-sleep] dreamer has no access to this world, or this world is simply senseless. Everything signs in relation to one another.
(St. Petersburg: Azbuka, that is told as a story/written down needs to be meaningful. We relate this meaning
2000) and A. L. Bem,
Issledovaniia: Pisma to the individual events of our lives. This is why dreams perform work while we are The organization of this sign-field is also a full, exhaustive narration of dreams as
o literature [Studies: asleep; as we sleep, we are also working by seeing dreams. And in the course of events and their further elaboration in dramatization. The last screen is the passage
Letters on literature]
(Moscow: Yazyki this work, all tensions are dramatized. The final form of dreams, ready to be from the perfected projection that dramatizes all aspects of desire this will be a
slavyanskoiy kultury, subjected to extensive interpretation, is a scene configured through the prominence moment in the complete screen-cycle that displaces the dream-flow, undergoing a
2001).
of the characters who act on it. complex structuring through mapping, respecting, and calculating their screen-
passages and boundaries (by the way, any map is capable of falsifying all previous
Absurdity is that portion of the experienced dream that cannot pass into narration works of cartography).
or clear representation, if we understand these two categories as analytical forms
that clothe dreams in significance. On both the representation-screen and theater-
Translated by: David Riff
screen, the screening allows us to find a hidden meaning, a place-event, marking
a psychotherapeutic line of flight. An entire series of representational scenes will
unfold on screen, connected by a certain dramaturgical logic (the nucleus of
neurosis appears thanks to the construction of the sujet, the plot). The relationship
of signs to signs subordinates itself to a series of operations that the psychoanalyst
has yet to delineate. Relationships are what is important to him. Relationships
between signs are defined on the basis of their decryption, meaning their regression-
to regression to an event that was repressed before it could occur. The content
of the dream begins to become more concrete, unfolding in reverse those
procedures that pressed, condensed, shortened, displaced, shifted, transformed,
and subjected it to a secondary reworking. Thus, interpreting means
reconstructing the place and time of events, expanding and broadening them
without compressing, allocating instead of dislocating, dispersing instead of making
them more dense, opening cavities and voids, only to fill them up again
immediately, asking new questions and listening to the dreamers speech as an
overflowing current, already completely out of control. And at the same time, it
means to place the dream or more broadly, the dream-flow into the real
experience of Creation.18

INTERVIEW
Igor Zabel: An Interview with Kathrin Rhomberg
Perhaps its the Destiny

of Utopias that They Are
No Longer Where
We Expect Them
Kathrin Rhomberg I am interested in the possible post-communist times and post- in the most obvious way but still takes be denoted by the three dots after the Kathrin Rhomberg
is a curator based
in Cologne and Vienna. connections between the Ausgetrumt. . . communist society, and the search for the actual world as its central theme. word Ausgetrumt. . .
She worked as an show and your experience with different individual and social designs Therefore, in contrast to Manifesta 3, I
exhibition organizer
and curator at the
Manifesta 3. Are there any links between for living, the search for sustainable tried to conceive an exhibition that goes A particularly interesting aspect of the
Secession in Vienna until the two? resistance, aesthetic autonomy, and beyond the real and addresses the idea show was, I think, that the works were
2002. Since then, she Although Ausgetrumt. . . was the first transformation. of imagination. not political in the usual sense, i.e.,
has been the Director
of the Klnischer group show I curated after my curatorial they did not explicitly address any direct
Kunstverein, participation in Manifesta 3, it was Could you describe the process that Could you briefly describe the main political issues. Yet your statements all
in Cologne, Germany.
She has curated conceived neither as a direct commentary brought you to an (at least, apparently) issues you wanted to address with the dealt with political aspects and the
numerous contemporary on my experience with Manifesta 3 nor as very different way of approaching social Ausgetrumt. . . exhibition? immediate experience of them. Does this
art exhibitions, including
Junge Szene (Vienna,
any kind of direct curatorial continuation. and political issues? Ausgetrumt. . ., which was shown in imply a particular relationship between
1998) and Ausgetrumt At the same time, Ausgetrumt. . . As its starting point, Manifesta 3 dealt 2001 at the Secession in Vienna, dealt the autonomy of art and its political role?
(Vienna, 2001/02). certainly cannot be considered unaffected with objectively identifiable with the observation and assumption Rather than raise the question of the
She was one of the
curators of Manifesta 3 by the impressions and conclusions circumstances political and legal that, following the years of euphoria and autonomy of art, the exhibition was
(Ljubljana, 2000). drawn from the research done for fact, so to speak. With Ausgetrumt. . ., confidence, the social and political intended to question the capacity of art
Manifesta 3. I intended to find an approach that reality after 1989 seemed to having to visualize a given perception of social
contended on the level of a different been widely perceived through a and political reality. Consequently, the
Manifesta 3 - which was titled perception of reality, in order to highlight growing disillusionment. This general artistic contributions were accompanied
Borderline Syndrome: Energies of psychological and social conditions that basic mood was felt to be motivated by by a series of interviews with artists,
Defense dealt with observations of might be considered representative for various potent political and ethical theoreticians and intellectuals, which
the two-edged realities of shifting the political reality circumscribed by the tendencies in our societies. On the other focused on the chosen theme. Thus,
borders and the politics of exclusion and title of the show (one meaning of the hand, Ausgetrumt. . . tried to address visitors to the show found themselves
defense in Europe at the end of the German word ausgetrumt is something more than the paradigm of confronted at the entrance to the
twentieth century. The artistic projects disillusioned ). disillusionment. It also attempted to exhibition hall by a barrier of many
presented at Manifesta 3 primarily emphasize the new productive monitors displaying these interviews. In
addressed or made reference to this There is a very complex relationship conditions that might be seen as order to approach the artwork, the
specific European reality. The artistic between art and everyday life with its resulting from the experience of visitors first had to deal with the
projects shown in Ausgetrumt. . ., socio-political reality. One of my disillusionment. This includes the statements in the interviews. They could
however, started at the point where questions for Ausgetrumt. . . was, how questioning of criticism, resistance, art, either ignore them or engage with them.
political and social utopias seem to have might art, and an exhibition of artistic and culture in the light of the economic Either way, they each individually
ended in recent years: with the question statements, find a language that does and political structures in which they are somehow had to correlate art and
of how to continue one s existence in not address the immediacy of our world embedded. This is what was meant to theory, as well as art and politics, before

Art can help us reconstruct
the idea of utopia, to recover
the specific prototype of existence
that is expressed there.
Powel Althezmer continuing their tour of the show. There opening up new dimensions and over the past few years. Reflections on again today. Back then, they pursued
Future Homeless, 2001
From the Ausgetrumt... was no authoritative ready-to-use options for action. Your oneiric reading crucial changes in everyday life, as well ideas and ideals, of course, and also
exhibition, Secession, answer offered for that relationship. of the exhibition s atmosphere might be as observed shifts within the art world in with reference to Ausgetrumt. . .
Vienna, 2001
due to those manifold underlays of its the 1990s, led me to conceive this kind utopian dreams. Thus, it sometimes
What role did the idea of dreams play in theme, as well as to the deliberate of exhibition. Intuitive experiences and, seems rather difficult not to confuse some
your concept? Did the exhibition refer avoidance of an all-too-exclusive certainly, unconscious and irrational casual use of such gestures with
only to social dreams and utopias, or was directness. elements always play an important role ideological authenticity. At the same time,
the idea of dreams as something very in my curatorial endeavors. one has to ask whether such a distinction
personal also important to you? Many works at the exhibition dealt with is of any relevance at all. Anyhow, what
The show did not deal so much with personal worlds and obsessive practices. What, in your opinion, is the role of immediately springs to mind, among
dreams, but more with the topic of the How do you see the balance between dreams and utopia in art today? other obvious and widely perceived
imagination as an active process of such positions and more general political Art can help us reconstruct the idea of affinities, is a certain increasing frequency
formulating alternatives to our current issues? utopia, to recover the specific prototype of artistic approaches that deal with
cultural and socio-political situation. One of the approaches presented by the of existence that is expressed there. performative ideas.
exhibition was to declare obsolete any Sometimes, however, you are
The title of your show indicates that differentiation between personal and confronted with the impression that Time seemed to play a fundamental role
dreams have come to an end. Yet the political realities. One might, for when you pursue artistic, as well as in the exhibition. Can you speak some
atmosphere of the show, I think, could example, consider the artistic practice of economic and political, developments, more about the meaning of time in
be described as oneiric. Does the end of Julius Koller as obsessive and as utopias are gone and dreams have Ausgetrumt. . .?
dreams mean awakening to the real depicting a very personal world, but its ended. But perhaps, it s the destiny of I already mentioned the observation of a
world, or do dreams continue on in some effect on one s perception and the utopias that they are no longer where kind of standstill. Besides its description
other way? description of the political reality is we expect them. as a certain existential orientation, it also
Actually, there are various meanings for unmistakable. comprehends an aspect of time, specified
the German title Ausgetrumt. . . Several of the artists at the exhibition as the lack of progression. Thus, I
Although they all seem to indicate a Did the idea of the unconscious play any belonged to the generation that started intended to visualize a specific feeling of
kind of standstill, the respective role in your concept? And more working in the 1960s. What do you see time through the selection of the artists
validation of this alleged state can also generally, do you normally shape your as the most important parallels and works, as well as through the setting of
turn out to be quite contradictory. As a concept in a very rational way or do you connections between the ideas and the entire exhibition. Time was
counterpart to paralyzed disillusion- also let irrational and unconscious practices of the 1960s and todays understood not only in the sense of
ment, for example, the term refers to the elements affect it? situation? And where? moving on, crossing borders, but also in
implicit possibility of disentanglement The exhibition was very much based on The 1960s definitely made available a the sense of waiting. What Boris Groys
followed by a restart. A new capacity to my personal experience with artistic, wide range of various gestures and said in an interview that was shown at
imagine could result from the standstill, curatorial, and institutional practices schemes that can frequently be observed the exhibition came very close to how I

Todays generation differentiates itself
from the generations of the 1980s
and 1990s, which werent waiting
for anything; they were satisfied with
mass culture. . . .The new generation
is waiting for something, and that is the
utopian state.
tried to offer a possible perception of the perfect example of the white cube and knew was shared by many friends and Jlius Koller
U.F.O. - Naut J.K.
role of time in relation to the chosen yet is still a space highly charged with colleagues in the art world. Thus there (U.F.O.), 1970
theme: Waiting for something, anything, historical reference? was a personal need for me to redefine From the Ausgetrumt...
exhibition, Secession,
is a utopian state; there is no other. The exhibition was consciously my engagement in working with art. But Vienna, 2001
Todays generation differentiates itself embedded in the background of the this proved to be just as difficult as
from the generations of the 1980s and historical and programmatic context of formulating and creating artistic or even
1990s, which werent waiting for the Secession, which in its founding socio-political utopias. For almost two
anything; they were satisfied with mass made a radical break with the past and years now, I have been working at the
culture. . . .The new generation is waiting at the same time set itself the goal of Klnischer Kunstverein in Cologne,
for something, and that is the utopian formulating visions for the future. The trying to create a new kind of space for
state. exhibition space, which is known art and reflection there. I envision a
internationally as the first white cube, is Kunstverein that would be not only an
Similarly, I felt that the prevailing mood a large undifferentiated space, lit by institution for showing, reflecting, and
of the exhibition was somehow huge industrial skylights. The world is discussing contemporary art and reality,
connected to the lack of color. Many thus blocked out, which intensifies the but also a place where artists can
works were white, or black and white. artistic energy. The works shown in this develop their work over a longer period
Was this fact based on any particular space isolate themselves from the world, of time without financial burdens.
strategy or reflection, such as an attempt but they do so precisely in order to exert Consequently, we have established an
to avoid the spectacular and seductive an influence on the world. In creating a apartment for international artists, and
aspect in favor of a more contemplative dialogue between the artworks and the we are presently creating ten working
approach? exhibition space, I tried to intensify this spaces to be offered for free to young
Yes, that was the intention. The prevailing specific quality of the exhibition space. artists, who will be chosen by an
absence of color, to a large extent, international jury. As far as curatorial
attempted to generate a kind of ephemeral What did the show mean for your strategies are concerned, I am working
atmosphere in order to emphasize both curatorial approach? How have your with the consciousness of failure.
the strong contemplative nature of the strategies developed since the show, and
selected artists works and the what direction do you think your work
contemplative impact the exhibition tried will take in the future?
to present. By the time I curated Ausgetrumt. . . I
certainly felt some slight disillusionment
What were your strategies in terms of the with the way curatorial and institutional
space at the Secession, which is a practices had developed a feeling I

N.I.C.J.O.B. Kathrin Rhomberg provides enough reason to doubt the developmental capability of the social-political Ausgetrumt...,
The Bath, 2000 Secession, Vienna,
From the Ausgetrumt... Ausgetrumt... agency defined in this sense. A questioning of the hegemony of Western 2001
exhibition, Secession, democracies was one of the results of the fact that, instead of meeting idealistic Exhibition view
Vienna 2001
Unfortunately, to get to the future one has to live through the present. expectations and humanist ideals in other words, instead of a comprehensive
There exists no precise (Hanif Kureishi) democratization, in which every subject is addressed as citizen every imaginable
English translation for form of nationalism and fundamentalism arose in response to global capitalism and
the German word
ausgetrumt. In simple Ausgetrumt. . . addresses a principal atmosphere of the present, one of neoliberalism. Rather than migration movements leading to an expansion of
terms, ausgetrumt disillusionment, almost resignation, through which the social and political realities democratic ideas, racism and xenophobia have again become central public issues
means something like
dreamed out, out of throughout broad sections of Europe, and outside the realm of geopolitical in Europe.
dreams, demarcation, are perceived. It is a very general atmosphere that is variously
disillusioned,
disenchanted, or
motivated, depending on different ways of life, but it is one that many people, Film theorist Georg Seesslen has described three phases of development for the
having decisively nevertheless, find inescapable. Western societies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He says they have
stopped dreaming. developed from a principle of capitalism and democracy through a state of
The collapse of the systems of Real Socialism led to the triumphant formulation of democracy in capitalism to the present understanding of democracy as capitalism.
a seemingly natural connection between democracy and capitalism. To this extent, The market determines social agency, competitiveness is the fundamental structure
the end of the confrontation of systems between East and West triggered an of communication. Symbolic and actual participation in power has degenerated into
abundance of projects. The highly touted economic prosperity that would come from a pseudo-cultural production in which politicians appear as pop stars and, to put it
global capitalism, the suggestive power of the media, the promises of new polemically, pop stars as politicians. Political ideas and convictions are no longer
communication technologies all these things led many to believe, for a brief negotiated but rather marketed. Politics serves more and more exclusively to
period, in the dream of a better future. It seemed that comprehensive generate images and legitimizes itself through these images. Politics as knowledge,
democratization, in which all citizens could finally participate directly, was close at as ideas and decisions, seems to grow increasingly insignificant, while politics as
hand. Political reality, however, soon showed that the hopes connected with this an emotionally charged and thus hollow symbolic event in its media presence
dream were but an illusion. From the European perspective, the wars in the becomes more and more important.
countries of the former Yugoslavia and the increasingly globally operating
economics, which specifically do not take account of the individual, soon made it In this context, discussions of such arguments as Francis Fukuyamas The End of
clear that the supposed progress had its price. And it was a price that would not be History appear to be a symptom of uncertainty. There seems to be no alternative.
paid by Western industrialized nations. Nothing is essentially changing in the basic structure of Western society. And the
rest of the world has hardly any option other than to adapt itself to this basic
Grounds for the current skepticism, as well as for the structural standstill, may be Western structure.
identified in the fact that most explanatory models still turn to democracy as a given
perfect model, insisting on the processuality borne by Western rationality as the way In recent years, there has been vehement discussion about formulating new fields
to a better world. Yet a consideration of local and global political everyday life of action, particularly in the field of art. Yet it is not so much a matter of formulating

new utopias, but rather of rethinking ones own position, our dependency on the
contexts in which we move, developing models for the way the discourse could be
redefined and reconquered in the sense of pragmatic interests. Another question is
how the symbolic level could be repossessed and how the uncanny alliance
between the symbolic and the emotional in the field of politics could be dismantled
in order to resist the hollowing-out of the political field. Against the background of
the historical, programmatic context of the Secession, which in its founding made a
conscious break with the past and at the same time set itself the goal of formulating
visions for the future, the exhibition Ausgetrumt. . . will deal with these questions.
Roman Ondk
SK Parking, 2001
The exhibition will not be able to give art its freedom, nor will it pave the way out
Slovak Skoda cars
of the current political and cultural situation. Instead, it will bring together the parked behind the
international positions of twenty artists who are able to sustain their potential for building of the
Secession for two
confrontation while searching for alternatives in light of the dilemma, to question months
ideological and economic mechanisms, to discuss utopia as an integral component From the Ausgetrumt...
exhibition, Secession,
of art, and to topicalize the development of other categories of imaging. Vienna, 2001

LETTERS
From Udo Kittelmann to Viktor Misiano
The Living Museum

Udo Kittelmann Dear Viktor,
was the Managing
Director of the Klnische
Kunstverein (Cologne Art It has gotten late once again. Actually, its time to go to bed at long last and, I readily admit that as time passes one becomes more versed in the art of
Association), from 1994
to 2001. In 2001, he
hopefully, have pleasant dreams. But your request for a small contribution is still consciously bringing oneself into such moments of being between in order to
was the Commissioner at waiting to be fulfilled. Recently, you asked me whether I have ever dreamed up an challenge ones imagination.
the Biennial of Venice exhibition. And at the time I answered you spontaneously that that has often been
for the German Pavillion
that was awarded the the case. But now Id like to change my answer, or at least qualify it. Perhaps it is But I must also admit, dear Viktor, that Ive never really thought about the dreaming
Golden Lion award as the not, as I first assumed, the deep nightly dreams in which exhibitions appeared to of exhibitions. There was no necessity to do so: it seemed to me to be simply as
best national contribution
for Gregor Schneiders me, vividly, as if real. It is, rather, the day-dreams, dreams of the kind in which one easy as it was. And now I recall how I left the house this morning. At the bus stop
"Totes Hausr". Since thinks one is fast asleep, although consciousness has not yet been blurred by the I saw a poster advertising the new Z4 BMW. The text of the poster read: How can
2002, Udo Kittelmann
has been the Managing
fog of unconsciousness. These are the moments, indeed often mere seconds, that you dream of something that doesnt let you sleep? But that is another story. . .
Director of the Museum separate the state of being awake from that of sleep, and thus that of dreaming. But In any case, we should continue this conversation later. In the meantime, I hope
fr Moderne Kunst often it is precisely these most creative moments where one no longer actively thinks you can make sense of these belated thoughts.
Frankfurt (MMK)
(Museum of Modern Art). and the thoughts and worlds of images take on a life of their own. Such moments,
He is the author of many particularly when one manages to save them after night has past, are doubtless With best wishes,
publications and essays
on contemporary art. creativitys most felicitous hours of glory. And it is also often the case that the
imagination dons its wings at the very moment of greatest exhaustion, shortly before Udo
one takes leave of the day.
Something like this must have happened when I dreamed of the living museum Translated by: Brian Poole
a few years ago, before I started to work on the museum. Suddenly it was there, in
an instant. The artworks in the museum came to life, in the sense that they were,
in comparison with the other, rather static objects, unstable and situative. This idea
which came to me when I was at the crossroads between still being awake and
already dreaming triggered many questions that have since preoccupied me,
right up to their realization last year. The exhibition itself appeared to me as an
image, even individual artists contributions appeared to me in my dream, and I
myself changed in the exhibition. Looking back on it all, I was preoccupied in a
state of creative rebellion, so to speak by the question of how such performative
installations, as I later came to call them, could change the idea of the museum and
the reception of art. The exhibition took place over a period of six weeks, and I
believe that if it hadnt appeared to me initially in a daydream, I could not have
thought it up.

LETTERS
Tobias Berger
Pacific Dreams
Tobias Berger
is a curator. He is
director of Artspace,
Dream
Hot nights, salty air, rich natural colors, and dark, liquid eyes.
unease about doing a show centered on the Pacific. The fear creeps in that
everything you say and exhibit will be deemed inappropriate, that maybe your take
Auckland, New The Pacific, the Dream Destination of the World, the place everybody would love to on Pacific contemporary art will not live up to the expectations of the ones who
Zealand.
go. When you think of the Pacific, you dream of black velvet prints, silky Gauguin invited you here. So as a way of seeking asylum, you do the exhibition as far away
paintings, and girls in coconut bikinis. You dream of an isolated hut on a white as possible. Anti-Pacific-Paradise Lithuania was the perfect, isolated port of call. It
beach set amidst softly swaying palm trees. When Maurizio Cattelan chose the was safe and far away, and nobody complained about ones lack of political
Caribbean as the ultimate castaway destination for the 8th Caribbean Biennial he correctness. We all seem to assume you can do whatever you like in Eastern
could just as easily have looked to the Pacific. Europe, if you are able to navigate your flight path under the radar.
There are places you can only dream of. What we sometimes forget is that these Interruption
fantasies are grounded in reality. Can something as pure and beautiful as a white A call from the heart of the Pacific Rarotonga the Cook Island National
empty beach in the middle of nowhere really exist in todays global tourist world? Museum: We would love to have the Pacific show.
We know that the cult-like scenario played out in The Beach was produced in an
idyllic setting that ultimately was destroyed in order to construct the perfect film set. Will we be safe in the lions den? What do I do? Sounds like a great place to go,
We also know that every picture of a supermodel is digitally enhanced and refined. sounds like a really great place to show an exhibition, and definitely sounds like a
Accustomed as we are to image-manipulation, trumped-up stories, and ultra- wonderful opportunity to lie on a beach. When we took the show to Lithuania, it
glamorous advertising, we tend to lose touch with reality. The truth is that the stuff was cool people really responded the Pacific could be problematic its their
of travelers dreams and artists fantasies does exist it exists in the Pacific. art and heritage. This exhibition feeds off the contemporary it is more a collection
of New Zealanders with Pacific roots, really wicked stuff. Doubts, but not enough to
Intermezzo back away from it. Damn. Every biennial is an imperialistic invasion of a beautiful
The biggest hit on television last year was Survivor, a reality show that plays on place. Its not by chance that most biennials are in harbor cities: Venice, Sydney,
the dream of Robinson Crusoe and his contemporary clone in the Tom Hanks movie Istanbul, So Paulo, Havana. . .
Cast Away. Instead of the single (plus Friday) lonely lost man, a group of people
(plus a camera team) is placed on a perfect, lonely island. Starting out as a nice Arrival
friendly group, they slowly transform into a complicated biotope of individuals The 747 is packed with Cook Islanders returning home after Christmas. KFC has
fighting for their own (monetary) fortune and altering the dream island into a tropical special flight cases so Pacific Islanders can bring home masses of their favorite
prison with high tech surveillance. crusty chicken.
Preparation After a three-hour flight, the plane touches the tiny green G-spot in the middle of
You can never tell what will happen, especially with a traveling exhibition. When nowhere. The Jumbo is parked in front of the little terminal like a Cadillac in front
you live and work in the biggest Polynesian city on earth, Auckland, having just of a fish-and-chips shop. Inside, a man strums arrival music on his little ukulele and
arrived from Europe as something like a Resident Tourist, there is a slight sense of beautiful island girls welcome us with leis.

The trip feels like a dream,
or the dream feels like a trip.
Are we tripping or dreaming?
Upon arrival, we finally understand that paradise is real. Deserted white beaches, than you can ever return. You come with a gift, or rather, fifteen gifts from fifteen China Civil Engineering
Construction Corporation
lovely people, all very relaxed, with tropical cocktails and a view of the beach. It is artists, and you leave as a different person. Slowly, you also realize that the Pacific Portrait, Rarotonga,
much more bountiful then we ever imagined, and it seems real. is a place deeply anchored in traditional values, a place that is much more Yuk King Tan 2004
complicated than small-town life. Family, religion, and politics (local and global) are Group portrait of the
Exhibition so dense in an island of nine thousand people, it feels scary; it closes in on you. China Civil Engineering
Every colonialists/curators dream comes true. It feels like touching a place that has The trip feels like a dream, or the dream feels like a trip. Are we tripping or Construction Corporation
living in Rarotonga,
never been touched before. dreaming? As time goes on, the passing days become vague and blurred at the capital of the Cook
edges, as heat shimmers on the still-deserted beaches. Islands situated in the
middle of the Pacific
The realization dawns, in picture postcard detail, that this is the first-ever Ocean. These 61
international overview of contemporary art in the Cook Islands. That was not Chinese workers from
one of the worlds largest
planned, and it is not what the exhibition was made for. Wrong, wrong. There are
construction company
things in this show that could be horribly misunderstood. Naked people in black are currently building
latex in front of the Christian cross; human heads that look ready to be eaten by Rarotongas courthouse.
This national courthouse
cannibals and we are not showing this in some edgy gallery but in the National where Cook Islanders
Museum, surrounded by wakas, local sculptures, and traditional musical will go to speak their
constitutional rights and
instruments. The Prime Minister will open the show, local artists will attend, and sign the documents of
television will cover it. It is as though the center of cultural activity for the region will their lives, is designed,
constructed and funded
be concentrated on a single exhibition. We arrive at the National Museum with the
completely by the
best contemporary Pacific art from New Zealand, but the public arrives at the Chinese government.
National Museum to be confronted with a show consisting of outsider art
controversial and marginalized.
Relax
You are sitting on the grass in front of the empty Palace. A magical place. You hear
the nearby waves, the excited hubbub as dancers in the restaurants get ready for
the Pacific Night. You talk to people, hear their stories, and you tell them yours.
You feel good, you feel welcomed and loved because you bring something new and
exciting to the place. You know that these people will give you more in these days

ARTISTS REFLECTIONS
In the final analysis, this absence

of any hidden subtext represents
Pavel Pepperstein
the films essential secret.
One could say that the absence
Dreaming of secrets in this film brings

its mystery to the forefront.
as Adventure
Pavel Pepperstein
Born in 1966 in
I still remember Antonionis film LAvventura, which I saw twenty years ago. I would
like to retell the film as it is stored in my memory. A group of rich young people,
hanging paintings. At some point, while he is walking around aimlessly, he sees a
girl, if I remember correctly. She has spread out a big piece of paper on the ground
Moscow. Hes an artist,
writer and theoretician young men and girls, go to an island to have some fun. The island is rocky, but it and is meticulously making a drawing in ink. I think it was a girl, but Im not sure.
of contemporary art.
In 1987 together with
is not difficult cross by foot. They spend some time scattered about, walking around As far as I recall, the drawing resembles a blueprint, or something between a
Y. Leiderman and S. the island. But when the time comes to leave, they find that one of the girls is drawing and a blueprint. The person squatting and crawling around it has expended
Anufriev he founded missing. They begin to look for her, but the search yields no results. a great deal of energy and effort on its production. The young man with the plumb
a group Inspection
Medical Hermeneutics. rule comes up to the girl who is drawing and stands there for a while, swinging the
Hes author of the From this point on, the film continues at a very leisurely pace. A plot unfolds, plummet on its string. Then, with a careless gesture, he drops his hand, so that the
books: On Six Books,
1990; Great Defeat involving the group of friends. But what follows is an erosion of the detective plummet hits the ink bottle and tips it over, spilling ink all over the
and Great Rest, 1993; mystery. The viewer, a victim of the inertia cultivated by the suspense genre, initially blueprint/drawing. The golden youth with the plumb rule walks away calmly in his
Idiotechnics and
Recreation, 1994;
expects that the events he is watching will shed some light on the incident that well-polished shoes, leaving the girl who made the drawing (was it really a girl?) in
Voice from Chinese occurred at the films outset. Maybe one of the protagonists will actually be linked complete confusion and shock.
Restaurant, 1996. in some way to the girls disappearance; maybe some other collision will soon
He lives in Moscow.
explain the mysterious events. But as the film takes us farther and farther away from This episode is apparently trying to tell us something about the structure of the film
the girls disappearance, we begin to understand more clearly that none of the as a whole. An instrument normally used to establish clarity, straightness, and
young people have anything at all to do with her vanishing. Nobody knows a thing. reflection now collides with an instrument of similar clarity, a highly precise
blueprint. Instead of touching one another constructively, they crash in a miniature
In the final analysis, this absence of any hidden subtext represents the films catastrophe. The moment of contact results in destruction. With the blow of the
essential secret. One could say that the absence of secrets in this film brings its plummet, the young fop spills the ink and spoils the clear image, creating a black
mystery to the forefront. Apparently, no one is involved in the girls disappearance; puddle that spreads across the paper.
none of the characters are privy to any evidence that might be hidden from the
viewer. While all the events in the film take place in the shadow of this On the whole, Antonionis entire aesthetic can be seen as the blow of a plummet
disappearance, the shadow itself is impossible to describe. Nobody seems against a bottle of ink. We see nothing but clarity and focus, in terms of both the
especially depressed or traumatized. Some episodes involve jealousy, while others visual sequences and cinematic language; even the way the actors play their roles
express the languor that permeates Antonionis films in general. demonstrates clarity. Each of the characters is defined with intelligible simplicity.
The plot is also very clear and focused. Visually, all the films scenes island,
One episode is actually so iconographic that it can serve as an emblem for this kind mansion, resort, hotel, country road, sky, desert are delineated with simple and
of narrative as a whole. One of the characters, a young man of means, a golden precise draftsmanship. Everything is arranged in lines and right angles. But this is
youth, wanders about, pining away, even if he looks just as beautiful, fashionable, exactly why the impact of straightness on straightness, clarity on clarity creates an
and stylish as any of the others. In his melancholy, he is constantly playing with a effect of inexhaustible obscurity that fills this film from within. Otherwise, the film is
plumb rule, a plummet on a string. This kind of tool is used to calculate right angles completely clear and bright. It contains virtually no nighttime episodes. Even the
in order to make straight constructions, whether in woodworking, architecture, or girls disappearance takes place under a clear sky, in broad daylight. Since the film

Essentially, the secret of dreaming
is that there is actually no secret,
nothing hidden, nothing to decipher
or demystify. Dreams hide nothing
but themselves.
1
The image of the plumb is shot in black and white, it seems very bright there. There is almost no sun, no choose or refuse him. All of them choose him, and he chooses all of them. From
rule is reminiscent of
Edgar Allen Poe, not only reflections or lens flares. It is as though everything has been lit with the even light the commentary he provides throughout, in which he explains that no girl ever
of the pendulum that of the sky, as if the sun were obscured by a very thin layer of cloud. The light is refuses him, one gathers that if he were an academic artist and depicted these girls
figures in the The Pit
and the Pendulum, diffuse and covers everything in equal measure. Nevertheless, in this film, too, the and women in a classical manner, they actually would be capable of refusing him.
but mainly of the plumb darkness or blind spot characteristic of all of Antonionis works spreads its full
rule in the story The
Golden Bug, where aggression. The absence of the possibility for differentiating is connected to the fact that the
the bug is used as a women who agree to pose for (and have sex with) him are guaranteed anonymity
plummet, dangling on
a string tied to its skulls I was fourteen years old when I watched this film. I was an artist, and there are from the very start, since nobody would be able to recognize them as the models
eyesocket. According to many artists in the movie, drawing and representing things in one way or another. for his paintings. The women are all painted in a manner that renders them
some, straight lines are
connected to the image Apart from that very important episode in which the young man with the plumb rule1 unrecognizable. Thus, sex with the artist is not really sex in terms of information.
of death, while all ruins the girls blueprint, there is another important image of an artist, namely the The women most of them are married, so were actually talking about adultery
curving or crooked lines
represent life. In terms artist as seducer. At first glance, the paintings of the artist in the film seem extremely are not cheating on anyone by going to bed with the artist, just as they are not
of iconography, the formal, in a cubist vein. It is not immediately apparent that these are actually female actually posing when they pose for him. They never actually appear on the resulting
plumb rule - as a tool
that creates inorganic portraits, mostly nudes. Their obscurity is the result of a coagulation of straight lines; canvas, a coagulation of lines, angles and other characteristic elements associated
straight lines in space - is the images represent a tautology of directness and clarity. with Braque and Picasso. By the 1960s, such elements were already being used
tied to the skull, fusing
with it to become a as design clichs, to decorate wallpaper, slippers, etc.
whole. It is not only Cubism which had degraded to design by the 1960s helps this artist to
attached to the skull, -
but to its optical faculty: seduce all the women in the world. He invariably proceeds as follows: after inviting In my view, this film offers a perfect illustration of the relationship between dream
the plumb rule is tied a girl to his studio, he asks her to get undressed and pose for him. The girl never and reality. Essentially, the secret of dreaming is that there is actually no secret,
into the skulls eyesocket.
In other words, this is
says no. As the artist puts it, nobody ever says no. As a matter of fact, he does not nothing hidden, nothing to decipher or demystify. Dreams hide nothing but
a kind optical adaptation even wait for some special moment to ask her to get undressed: as soon as the door themselves. Every dream tips an inkbottle; every time we dream, a black puddle
for death. This metaphor
can describe the
of the studio closes, he pouts his lips and rolls his eyes strangely, and the girl falls spreads, forming what we might call the secret of dreaming. Full of a pathos
introduction of any pre- into a trance, giving herself to him completely, in a kind of a somnambulant haze. reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes, the Holy Grail, and all the mysteries that populate
defined schematic
construction to reality,
our romantic childhood, we repeat that the secret of dreaming was uncovered by
such as the optical sight It is interesting that none of the women can refuse him when they come to his Sigmund Freud, for example, at Bellevue on this or that date. We repeat these
or scope, for an example.
In a softer form, it also
studio; their differences are removed, which produces an effect of anonymity and words, stressing the secret of dreaming, uncovered, etc., that is, the detective-
describes the artist or depersonalization. Once pulled into the artists orbit, a girl has already been story mystery of the moment. The secret was uncovered in the same way that reality
the painter, drawing from
nature, targeting reality
deprived of any choice about whether or not to give in. By the same token, the artist is disclosed by blotches and gaps in the image. But the most important thing is that
with his Thanatoid also has little choice: according to the film, he does not actually pick the girls the secret is not a truth.
projections. The fixation
of reality through the
according to whether they are ugly or beautiful, young or old, etc. Instead, he is like
help of death, in this a machine, forced to perform the operation of seduction with any female being he Through his film, Antonioni has created a beautiful illustration for the narrative of
case understood as a
kind of fixative or glue
happens to see. He has no system of preference. In the same way, the girls cannot the secret. Although the secret is uncovered, nothing becomes clear. Because

It is the only form of unconscious
we will never become conscious of,
the only authentic subconscious.
nothing can become any clearer in spaces of original clarity. Quite the contrary,
when the secret is uncovered, everything darkens; ink is spilled onto the blueprint,
onto the scheme. Thus, we appeal to our dreams again and again, as we do to
adventure. With virtuoso dexterity, we feed secrets into their very heart. Something
inevitably disappears when we dream. We know that we are experiencing the
dream in place of something else. Yet this other hardly originates in the depths of
our unconscious, nor is it some incident or repression from the past. Instead, this
something is not a part of us at all. It is something we are not, something that fails
to enter the orbit of our experience, even on the level of oblivion. It is the only form
of unconscious we will never become conscious of, the only authentic
subconscious. It does not share itself with us in any way; it is not out to bring us
any gifts or returns. And this really is the greatest secret, namely that there is
something in the world that does not belong to us, that we are not everything.
Furthermore, if we use speculative means, authenticated through humanity or

natural agency, reached through some sort of meditative illumination or immersion,
induced by hallucinogens or psychedelic drugs, to reach a feeling of this Everything,
our sensation of Everything is not in fact the real everything. Beyond this
Everything there is another everything, which remains hidden from the Everything
we can touch through ecstatic means. This is why I would say that every dream is
the dream of the vanishing girl. Every dream blots something out for us; it is a blind
that is installed to hide something. Most strangely, that which is hidden from us is
not the truth about us, but the truth that is not about us. And as such, it will never
reveal itself to us. It seems to me that Antonionis film shows this rather brilliantly.
Constructed through oneiric breaks and stops, it is a slow, Morphean anti-
illumination.
Translated by: David Riff

ARTISTS REFLECTIONS
Pavel Pepperstein
Dreams and Museum

Photos : Guido The project Dreams and Museum was realized in the art museum in the Swiss town Whether or not I am right, I devoted five exhibitions at Kunsthaus Zug to the topic of Pavel Pepperstein,
Baselgia, Zug. 2002.
Title of show: Traum Zug in 2002. It was the last in a series of five exhibitions I did at Kunsthaus Zug oblivion. The core of all the exhibitions consisted of the black and white ghostly
und Museum, between 1998 and 2002. For this exhibition, the director of the museum, Matthias drawings on the walls, which disappeared after each of the shows, when the walls
Kunsthaus Zug 2002.
Haldemann, gave me the opportunity to work with the museums collection. I chose were repainted and all the images covered in white. These images are still secretly
several paintings and graphic works (by Hodler, Czanne, Matisse, Max Ernst, Picasso, present in the museum, hidden in layers of paint. The last of these five exhibitions
Giacometti, Klimt and others), as well as some sculptures. I arranged them in small was intended to demonstrate that the critique of history originates in dream; the
groups or separately in nine rooms and accompanied them with both my own drawings picture is born in the shift of space and time that rules the dream. Thus, there can
on the museum walls and texts. be no end of history, nor can there be anything post-historic; if dream enters the
The texts represented descriptions of my supposedly recent dreams. The works of the museum, if memory agrees to accept real oblivion as its companion and reference
modernist artists included in this exhibition illustrated the content of these dreams. point, and not another memory, it means that history has never existed.
The action was quite audacious. Roughly speaking, such appropriation is even more
impudent that the appropriation of the work itself or its authorship, since here we are Such a message, in general, comes from todays mass culture marked by globalization.
talking about appropriating another persons phantasms. This culture penetrates the museum under the guise of dream, it does not want to be
remembered, it wants to be eternally young and drunk, and when it grows old, it
In general, the art museum (and especially, the contemporary art museum) is a public wants to be forgotten and become invisible. This is neo-nomadic culture, structured in
institution that serves the function of History. Even when the museum demonstrates a gypsy style.
something absolutely new, it implies that this is the part of the new that will remain
in memory and become History. This is the traditional role and function of the Youll fall asleep and in the morning,
museum: it must demonstrate the presence of individual memory and not only create Farewell, my sweetheart!
history. Memories kept in the museum might have once been private but have now I will leave with a crowd of gypsies
already become public and obligatory for many. Following the nomad tent.
But that very History (it might be defined differently the history of ideas, cultures, Love for a single night, totally sincere and totally flippant this is the song sung by
appeals, design, power, art, innovations) does not remain static, but constantly changes todays artist to the museum, and by the museum to the work of art, by the curator to
its traditional role to be the master of the museum and, thus, the function of the the exhibition, and by the exhibition to cultural memory. . .
museum. Nowadays, something that once silently hid in museum spaces like shadows,
a blemished and inevitable, but poignantly fatal circumstance begins to breathe and rule. I would like to conclude with two example of fictitious (invented) dreams from the
This something leaves the shadows and starts to smile happily and powerfully, despite exhibition Dreams and Museum. A small drawing by Czanne depicting a rural
being the enemy of History, the reverse side of memory. This is oblivion. Is the history of landscape is accompanied by the following text: I was dreaming that I am visiting
oblivion possible? Certainly, just as the light of darkness is possible. Moreover, if a well- Czanne. He shows me his paintings and drawings, and suddenly he pronounces,
considered (or as Lacan would say, elaborated) history of oblivion does not appear, it You see, I am very unhappy. I am fat and suffer from shortness of breath;
might be substituted by the oblivion of history (feared by some and craved by few). consequently, my works lack space. At these words I am totally horrified. His inability

Richard Gerstl: Bildnis to depict space seems to be the misfortune of this town. I am looking around and see There is a text: I was dreaming that we were leaving the house where our family Studio of the artist
Alexander von in Kunsthaus Zug,
Zemlinsky, 1907. with a shudder that the fields are quickly narrowing, trees are adhering to the road, the had been for a long time. There is fuss everywhere; everybody is packing and 2002.
Kunsthaus Zug, Stiftung road to the fences, the fences to the houses, and the sky is getting closer to the collecting things. I am told to take the family portraits down off the walls. I take them
Sammlung Kamm.
landscape. At the same time, tension is growing: all these things, this world, everything down one after another, and see that the faces they depict continue to appear (either
presses down on us, and in a minute all will be crushed, and the only thing that because of time or some unknown photo-effect) on the wall behind the portraits.
consoles me is the thought that Czanne will die sooner than me because he is very The fewer framed portraits there are on the wall, the more faces there are behind
fat. Suddenly I hear a terrible clap (Czanne might have burst) and the landscape is the portraits. Very slowly (because of the bright light) they grow pale and then
torn into two parts open cosmos appears, vast cosmic spaces full of sunshine and disappear.
planet movement appear. And an enormous procession moves through the cosmos,
past the planets and stars, with countless billions of people bearing huge slogans with This dream is so straightforward that it must not be interpreted. Everybody is
one word: Czanne. leaving the old, big culture that had existed for so long that it became the family
business for those who are now leaving. The faces depicted in the portraits by
My interpretation of this dream is as follows: Czanne is one of the founders of Matisse, Schiele, Giacometti, and Hodler seem to recall relatives, uncles,
modernism, a democratic art. He transformed an inability to depict space into the grandfathers, cousins, and others. These faces disappear they are doomed for
sign of his revolution in art. However, one should not forget the popular argument oblivion. But they escape into the walls, and perhaps, as in a suspense novel, they
against modernist art, in general namely, the objection: Anybody can draw like will become ghosts in this house when another family moves in. Perhaps, they will
this. This reproof is basic for this art itself, as it became the age of everyone and (after having lived several eternities) resurrect into something unfamiliar, new
anyone. Czannes shortness of breath makes the worlds collapse closer; it can be inhabitants of these long-suffering houses, the museum and the world.
called atmospheric (atmosphere is a hierarchy; consequently, modern democracy
does not want or cannot be ecological and destroys air). But this refusal to breathe
Translated by: Ksenia Kistiakovskaya
promises a journey into the airless cosmos. The curtailment of agrarian spaces, the
crash of the agrarian categories of space, presents a way into the cosmos, which
arises from the broken Czanne. Everybody marches in the cosmic procession,
glorifying his name (not for nothing does his name recall the word sesam [open
sesame!], the magic invocation, the master-key).
Another example: one wall of the exhibition Dreams and Museum is covered with
paintings by Matisse, Schiele, Giacometti, Jawlensky, and others. They are all
portraits (or self-portraits). All depict faces. On both sides, where the chain of framed
portraits ends, the faces continue, drawn by me on the walls: there are some
women, an old man, a child, an officer, etc.

QUESTIONNAIRE
Robert Fleck
The Project You is to invite all the major artists of modern
art to visit one major exhibition in our
Always Dreamed of... times that includes their work. Looking at

the crowds by the front door of the
MOMA-show in the Neue Nationalgalerie
in Berlin, a very basic and very old idea
Nicolas Bourriaud, a kind of Orson Welles or James Cameron, Robert Fleck is a curator
born 1965, is the
co-Director of the
Nicolas Bourriaud if only the contemporary art economy
passed again through my head: what a
difference compared to the time when
and currently director
of Deichtorhallen
Palais de Tokyo I dreamt hundreds of exhibitions that did were as big as the Hollywood industry. Mondrian, Kandinsky, Beckmann, in Hamburg, Germany.
in Paris. He recently He was co-curator
curated Touch not materialize. The major reason was the Every exhibition I ever made was Vantongerloo, Moholy-Nagy, Matisse, treatment of artworks by museums is not of Manifesta 2
in San Francisco, lack of money; it s as simple as that. structured like a movie: as Jacques Rivette Duchamp, etc., were still alive and a very important question in regard to the in Luxembourg, 1998.
GNS and Playlist said, every movie is a documentary about
Otherwise, I would dream of curating a working as artists. Then, nobody cared, intrinsic value of the artwork. They would
in Paris, and is one
of the curators of the show that combined drawings from the its conditions of elaboration, and more or less, about what they were doing. have a good day. Perhaps the meeting
first Moscow Biennale exhibitions are the same. I believe that the would not be recorded, or it would merely
sixteenth century, tantric monochromes, There were perhaps five hundred people
in 2005. He published
two essays, Relational modern art and recent works, for example. food and drink, the decor, the general in the world with any consciousness that be a comment in the visitors book. For
Aesthetics in 98 and Think about the insurance cost. Or an ambiance, or the discussions during the these artists existed and that their work me personally, it has always been very
Postproduction in 01
exhibition that would also be a city (I was process of the show are clearly visible in was of any relevance. Surely no more important to think that literally nobody
close to doing it in Bulgaria, in a whole the final result. And of course, I don t have than that. . . Today, you can bring (except for some fifty or a hundred people)
block of Sofia, but the guy at the French any interest in an exhibition without a together a million visitors in one country to cared about Mondrian while he was still
embassy was removed). An exhibition scenario, a plot, a strong concept. I don t see this work. Therefore, my project alive. This thought gives us a kind of
under the sea (a tribute to Captain Nemo), think that the next Documenta should be would be to invite Piet Mondrian, Vassily freedom to act in regard to the pressures
one you could access with a scaphander. curated by an artist, like my colleague Kandinsky, Fernand Lger, Henri Matisse, of topicality in the artistic field. And of
A remix of the whole Louvre. A Jens Hoffmann; I think, the next Constantin Brancusi, and Marcel course, it would be wonderful just to have
neuroprogram that the visitor would Documenta should be curated by Duchamp either to Berlin, in order to see the chance to open a door, physically
connect directly to his or her brain, as in somebody who has something important MOMAs travelling exhibition, or to New speaking, to these artists. It is about
the movie Strangedays, directed by to say. York to visit the MOMA, the Guggenheim, oeuvres that had been created exclusively
Kathryn Bigelow in 1995. An exhibition in and the Whitney. Then we would have a out of a deep faith in art. And thats the
the reconstructed decors of the movie debate about their reaction, and about art only possible behavior.
Playtime by Jacques Tati, a fake city that in general and very much about the
was destroyed in 1967. I could easily be fact that such considerations as the March 2004

Giacinto Di Pietrantonio to be hung in Moscow. The show was the time there was no television and we
is the founder of the
agency for
Giacinto never done for economic reasons. The had to invent our own forms of
contemporary art:
GLOBAL VISION
di Pietrantonio idea, of course, could be applied to other entertainment, which took place mostly in
Giacinto Di Pietrantonio
contexts, depending on the situation. For the woods. I think this attitude has
Productions. He is Have you dreamed an exhibition? example, today we could propose it for remained in everything I do. There was
Director of the If you mean a physiological dream, the Iraq. Then theres Network, an exhibition only one movie theater, which I went to
Galleria dArte Moderna
e Contemporanea answer is no. If, on the other hand, you in which the artists would be invited to every day; it was a magical experience. So
in Bergamo. He is also mean imagining an exhibition, then that enter non-art structures and act inside my experience with imagery, with
the Editor of the art
discussion magazine has happened many times, because you them, becoming the editor of a magazine, creativity, is based on these things and on
Perch?and Editor of cant do a show without imagining it first. for example, or a journalist for a daily a provincial persons aptitude for
I Love Museums the
Whatever the exhibition, you have to have newspaper, a creator of a television dreaming, which is still with me when I
magazine of AMACI
(Associazione Musei a strong imagination, a sense of project, to program, etc. There are many others, but do exhibitions, similar to the way Fellini
Arte Contemporanea think of something new. Ill stop here. made cinema while always dreaming of
Italiani). Also, he
continues to teach Rimini, his hometown.
History of Art What project have you always dreamed Can you reveal how your curatorial work
at the Accademia di Translated by: Stephen Piccolo
Belle Arti di Brera of but never realized? is related to the imagination?
in Milan. There are several. For example A Matter As I said above, my curatorial work is
of Class would be an exhibition in which continuously connected to the
works by artists are shown together with imagination, like a game. I mean that for
drawings by children from different me making shows is a continual game, as
nations that interpret those works. Or Aid, is development and knowledge of the
an exhibition planned at the beginning of world. I had the good fortune to be born at
the 1990s, asking different artists to the beginning of the 1950s, in a small
design a poster on the idea of assistance, town in the mountains in Italy, where at

INTERVIEW
Hans Ulrich Obrist: A Conversation with Alejandro Jodorowsky
Neither a
Real Beginning
nor a Real End
Hans Ulrich Obrist
(Zrich, 1968)
What are you working on at the And as far as the matter of the actual Alejandro Jodorowsky
Photo: Doug Aitken
is curator at Musee moment? workplace is concerned, are you working
dArt Moderne Oh la la!! What in? What area? here? Is this your studio? Theres this Alejandro Jodorowsky
de la Ville de Paris Fabulas Panicas
and professor
apartment on one side, theres also the
1967 -1973
at IUAV/University Yes, I know there are lots, but thats caf... How in fact does the laboratory Taken from the book
of Venice. He is precisely whats interesting, isnt it? How operate, where you work out your Fabulas Panicas de
special correspondent Alexandro Jodorowsky.
of Domus Magazine. do you describe your current activity or different projects? Ed. Grijalbo. Mexico.
He co-curated Cities activities-plural in terms of areas of I take all the equipment down there, and
on the Move,
the 1st Berlin Biennale, expression? I read the Tarot. But sometimes I also go
Manifesta 1 (Rotterdam), Right, let me tell you. So, what am I to Spain, to those piazzas and plazas in
Laboratorium, The Broken
working in? Poetry. Ive produced a book of Italy, and Mexico, and so on.
Mirror and Utopia Station
at the Venice Biennale poems, inspired by Japanese haikus, and
(2003). Recently another book of poems called The Voice of So your workplace is the world itself, and
his book Interviews
Volume 1 was published the Tarot, where every Tarot card recites a in this sense theres no one special place,
by Charta/Pitti Imagine. long poem. Im also working on another no preferred studio...
book which is called Le Matre, le voleur No, for writing, theres no studio.
et le magicien /The Master, the Thief, and
the Magician, which is about the secret of Have you got any unrealizable utopian
tales, Zen tales, and its related to various projects?
wise men I know. Okay, thats where Ive created a network of poets on the
literature is concerned. But at the moment Internet called Poetic Re-evolution.
Im also writing a book on the technique of Not Poetic Revolution, but poetic Re-
the Tarot, with my wife, Marianne Costa. It evolution. And my utopia, as it
should be finished by September. happens, is the fact that the existence of
this kind of network can be used as a
And what about film? response to terrorism and as a refusal of
For film, its possible that Ill shoot King politics as theyre currently being
Shot in November. Its ready. But Ive got conducteda kind of poets
to wait until September for things to be internationale, a worldwide poetry
finally fixed. Im still getting offers for union.
detective movies, but Im not going to get
involved. There you go, its the way I said, And its not up and running yet?
Im doing lots of things. Were trying, were trying.

Now I would say that, for me,
the notions of beginning and end
are rational constructs which I no longer
use. Life, for me, is just a continuation.
Pedro Reyes So its a project in progress. Are there right now... is it connected in some way the linearity inherent in the traditional And in relation to this problem-set, what
Chemical Architecture
7. 2002 any others? or other to your previous film? conception of narrative. part did Ren Daumals book play with
Stainless steel frame Utopian projects? No, I dont think so. But none of my films are connected with Yes, absolutely. In The Sacred Mountain regard to The Sacred Mountain?
woven in vynil plastic.
Making some films, perhaps, but its the otherstheyre all connected to ME, I tried hard to break all the laws of Mount Analogue is an unfinished novel.
always a bit random, so its utopian in a more than anything else! To my way of narration. Yes, sure... Daumal interested me because he was a
certain sense... expressing myself... disciple of Gurdjieff. And Gurdjieff
But can we nevertheless talk in terms of interested me a lot himself. In that novel
Talking of films, Ive prepared a few I was actually asking you that question a narrative based on a subconscious there were things to do with the theme of
questions about your films, and, in because Im interested in the idea of architecture, or is it rather that the film initiation, and at that particular time I was
particular, Id like you to tell me about linearity, because you said in The Dance no longer has any beginning or end? generally interested in initiatory,
something I read in another interview: of Reality that, from 1953 on, the idea Thats a very metaphysical question youre metaphysical literature. But the heirs
you said you were greatly affected by of chronology had ceased to exist for you. asking me. When I studied with my Zen didnt give us the rights, so I said to myself
Buuels films when you were about 25. At this particular moment the American master, the most important question he that Id make my own film, my own
Would you talk a bit about the influence artist Doug Aitken, who likes your work asked me was: What is it that neither mountain.
Buuel has had on your work? very much, is in the process of writing a begins nor ends? I didnt know what the
Yes, but its not very easy to talk about. A book about non-linearity, and Id really answer was, at that time I didnt know. Youve also said that all roads lead to
lot of films have affected and influenced like you to talk to me about this idea. Now I would say that, for me, the notions films: a place where poetry, theatre and
me. When I saw Frankenstein with Boris You know, Im even starting to forget the of beginning and end are rational all your experiments converge. You
Karloff, it was the same! Later on it was date of my own birth, Im not sure about constructs which I no longer use. Life, for regard film as a sort of total artwork?
Todd Brownings Freaks, then it was it any more, I dont know exactly when my me, is just a continuation. While I may At a certain time I did actually think that,
Fellinis La Strada, then Buuel, and so children were born, or when I got married. create a beginning and an end in an but gradually, as the years passed, and I
on and so forth. Ive been affected by a I dont live with simple dates, I have artwork, its neither a real beginning nor a fought against the industry, I realized that
whole heap of films, just as I have by a trouble working out if five years have real end, because these things dont exist. film is nothing other than a pure industry.
whole heap of books. passed, or ten, or twenty. I dont know. I Getting sicker each time, and nastier, and
think time is something total, I think past In a way, this was already present in El sillier. With Surrealism, people thought
But what was it about Buuel in and future are there, in the here of the Topo, where the traditional narrative that cinema was the greatest art of all, but
particular? now. I dont see any reason to get plans were already particularly misused. today, what are we left with? With
I liked Buuels world, the fact that he involved with the time of clocks and Yes, I did that in El Topo, but it wasnt American versionsAmericanadesand
was a real auteur, that honesty about the calendars. I havent got a clue how to do very conscious, it wasnt a rational absolute inanities which have nothing to
way he expressed himself, I liked it all a that! attitude. It was an almost organic do with the film dauteur. So theres just
lot. attitude. The fact is, you do precisely a tiny little place for an artistic cinema, but
But this also implies, as far as your films what you can do. it costs such a lot to make films that its
And what about the film youre preparing are concerned, that theres a break with currently impossible to make them the

All that remains in the end is action,
and improvisation in the present moment,
and thats what the essence of theatre is.
way you want. strip, you can do what you cant do in artists, and that never realized project, With the group Panique, I put on a stage
film. did it all end up with a publication? play which was one enormous
And you had direct and brutal experience But the Dune script is written! Its a big happening. But for me it came quite
of this with Dune, because there you Talking of film, Id like to get back to the book and Ive got it up here, and in my naturally, because Ive put on lots of stage
were confronted by the pace of the story of your abortive Dune project, head the film is made, too! And then I plays and I realized that there were
industrial cinema, werent you? because that story interested the film made it in another way with four series of accidents every time, and that no one
Yes, and I couldnt handle it. And then I world a whole lot, not only because comic strips, one called the Metabarons, performance was like any other. So I said
personally dont want to do what the everyone was interested in advance by another the Technofathers, and another to myself that in the end of the day the
guys who made Festen didtalented what your treatment of Dune might have still Incal, with the last one by the name very essence of the theatre is that it
people but their images are ugly. resulted in, but also because you refused of Megalex. Ive put all my ideas into doesnt stayin those days people
Because to make a beautiful image you to make any compromise whatsoever these comic strips series, so Ive actually werent using videos.
need money. So everything happens as over everything to do with the casting. realized the project!
if the film dauteur were doomed just to With Dali, with Giger... Would you like to It doesnt leave any traces...
make ugly images. Youre limited by say a bit about that casting? Will you tell me about Santa Sangre? Thats it. So by pushing that idea to the
light, you cant have the colours you Dali was going to be the mad emperor of Santa SangreHoly Bloodis a film limit, you have to remove anything thats
want, and I, for one, dont want to work the galaxy. There was Orson Welles who thats going to come out on DVD in likely to leave a trace: the written play, the
like that. So I wait eight or ten years to was to play Baron Harkonen, and they England in October, and its my latest film. direction, etc. All that remains in the end
make a film, until I find someone crazy saw eye to eye! Gloria Swanson was to Thats all! What more do you want me to is action, and improvisation in the present
enough to invest the capital, the few play the old lady Bene Gesserit. The say about it? In my view, its my best moment, and thats what the essence of
millions needed to be able to make the music was to be by Pink Floyd; Giger and movie. theatre is.
film. For me, actually, the centre of Moebius were going to do the sets, and so
creativity is poetry, because its an art on and so forth. There were a lot of people And whys that? Yet, with regard to the group Panique,
that cant be commercial. Poetry isnt involved... Because my early films are still a bit too the Mexican based artist Pedro Reyes
bought and sold. My poetry has been cerebral. Santa Sangre is an emotional talked to me about a piece of a film thats
published, but Ive got just a small What was H.R.Gigers role in the film where I work with my feelings. And I called Viva Dada, where performances
readership. project? think its very beautiful, its the one I like are involved.
H.R.Giger was going to make the sets for best. Its mine! When we put on a happening
Strictly limited... the planet of the Harkonens. An accursed here in Paris at the second Festival of Free
With a comic strip, things are different, planet, and he put all that particular Theres also been something thats had a Expression, it was a happening that lasted
obviously. Right away you have a first run experience into his Alien. huge impact on the art world, and thats four hours!
of 100,000 copies, and millions get sold! your anticipation in the late 1950s of
Its an industrial art, too, but freer than And was that experience with Dune, all what the happening would turn into.
film, all the same, because, in a comic those scripts, and all those contacts with Yes, its what I called fleeting panics.

Theatre must be able
to help people to alter their lives.
In 1965. That was the Mlodrame People have been performing it for nearly Incidentally, Ive seen a discussion with day they came to me to tell me theyd Performance at Utopia
Station in 50th Venice
Sacramentel? 40 years! Its incredible isnt it? Arrabal at the time of a film which he been cowardly, theyd been afraid... Bienalle.Pedro Reyes
Yes. And its still there in that film Viva recently brought out on DVD, and there A House for Future
Caveman, 2003.
Dada. All the material thats there is mine. Theres really only Ionesco with The Bald was an amusing interview where he And how did you come to call your Echigo Tsumari
But people sometimes say its Topors, or Primadonna (La Cantatrice Chauve) in never stops moving a chair in front of his movement Panique? Who invented Triennale Japan.
Allen Ginsbergs, but sometimes they say Paris whos in a similar situation. A face, and he talks about the group that?
its mine, all the same. Theres actually propos, did you have connections with Panique, and he says that basically you I found the word. I thought of the god
still a little trace on video. people like Ionesco, and Samuel never really worked together because Pan. But as far as the genesis of the group
Beckett? each person was doing his own work. is concerned, Arrabal and Topor always
If I understand you properly, the Yes, I went to see Samuel Beckett when Now, because the notion of working maintain we formed it in the Caf de la
happening comes from a subtraction he wrote his play. I talked to Ionesco together interests me a lot, Id like you to Paix, but its not true! The truth is that Id
from theatre. when he wrote The Chairs, it was the tell me about the way things happened invited them to the Crazy Horse Saloon
Yes, you get rid of all the dross, everything period of the theatre of the absurd, and it from your point of view. where there was a striptease artiste called
that may remain to obtain the essence. was Arrabal who introduced me to all I totally agree with Arrabal. We decided to (Fanfan Paraboum). It was a complete
those people, because we were friends. call our work Panique, but everyone did scandal, because she was dressed up as
But at that particular moment it was also But personally I dont stay with things. their work on their own behalf, and we an SS officer and she undressed to the
the period of your weekly Panic Fables Once Ive done something, I head on right werent an artists collective. For example, rhythm of German military marches,
(Fabulas Panicas), which are still very away towards something else. So I didnt when I did the big happening in Paris, I ending up with a swastika on her sex!
popular in Mexico. stay with the theatre of the absurd. From naturally thought that Topor and Arrabal And thats where we founded Panique.
Yes. Theres even a plan to publish them the theatre of the absurd I moved on to were going to collaborate. So I prepared Arrabal and Topor wanted to call it
in their entirety in Mexico this year, as a the happening, from the happening I went all that, and I invested a real fortune in it, Grotesque but I came up with the word
complete works. I was interested in the to therapy and psycho-magic, which because Id worked for years for Marceau, Panique. Panique is the god Pan. Its
comic strip and I was keen to draw. So I consists in making theatre a place where writing pantomimes for him and never nothing to do with fear, its totality
drew for four or five years, one page a what you put on has an influence on the getting paid by him, and he ended up allness.
week in a magazine, and I put whatever I real life of people. Theatre must be able to paying me my royalties all of a sudden
wanted in it. At that time people treated help people to alter their lives. after a court case. So I invested that huge So its the place where everything
me as if I was crazy, but I affected a whole sum of money in that company. Arrabal converges, everything meets...
generation of people. We might call this open scores? and Topor were meant to act, but a day Yes, but because we were so different,
Im not sure what we might call it. But do beforenot even a day before, but an we decided that each one of us could
Like your play El juego que todos you know a book I published which is hour before the show!they sent me a make statements about Panique the way
jugamos (The Game We All Plays), called The Dance of Reality? And after prostitute who was a friend of theirs, to tell we, and we alone, understood it. And
which marked various generations and that I wrote another book about the me that they wouldnt be turning up! They then to make fun of Bretons mania
still does so. techniques of psycho-magic. betrayed me, let me down! And the next about expelling and excommunicating

For me, the foe of the cinema
is Hitchcock, because everything
in his movies is totally constructed
and thought out, even the picture
and the imagery. For me thats anti-film
if ever there was.
people, we also stipulated that he was things. Its very calm, very special. I have of truth and consequences like the from mythology and anecdote, and
not only banned, but that it would be a great deal of admiration for him, and I Surrealists did, where everybody puts brings out many things, but its also a
impossible to expel anyone, not matter think hes brilliant, and I think he also what they want to put. modest kind of work. Im not looking for
who it was. We were Panique forever. admires me, because he works with me. heroism, and Im not trying to see myself
We couldnt be expelled because we Its all very smooth. But in a general way Like film. as the revealer of a universal truth. But
werent a group! But I did nevertheless the world of the comic strip is like that, Yes, a game of truth and consequences this work can be far-reaching. Several
expel myself. very smooth. Its a kind of paradise, like film. So either you do that, but its not times I reckon Ive risked my life for a
nobody gets upset. my preferred form of poetry, or else you film.
And did the dialogue with Arrabal and fight and that involves a lot of pain
Topor carry on after that self- To get back to the movies, you were because its always a relative failure. You So when you make a film, you put
expulsion? saying that films are also a form of never get to do what you wanted to do. yourself completely on the line, too?
Of course! Before Topors death, for poetry. Doug Aitken is very interested in The cinema is an approximation of poetry, When I make a film, I dont see my
example, we went to have lunch at a your work on concepts of time. He but its not actual poetry itself. Thats how friends, I dont invite anyone to my home
restaurant once a month. We laughed wanted to ask you, through me, about I see relations between the two. any more, and I dont go out. I go to bed
together like that once a month. We went what you mean by that. at midnight and get up at 6 am. I eat very
on seeing each other as friends. With In my case, my films are poetry, because And as far as the matter of mythology is little, and I dont see either my wife or any
Arrabal its the same, even now. When I I do everything: I have the idea, I do the concerned, cant we see in your films a mistresses, I dont have any sex life. My
went to present a book in Spain, he came directing, the editing, and the music. Its kind of extension of the structures of the existence in such periods as those is
along... like when I write, with just this narrative of myth in film? completely and solely devoted to the film
difference, that the poetry I write on Its possible. In my films Ive made a lot Im making.
Theres another very important paper belongs to me completely, of use of symbols, and the esoteric
collaboration which we havent talked whereas making a film is necessarily tradition, but I was looking above all for And as a rule how much time do those
about yet, and thats the one you have getting involved in a huge battle. archetypes in my unconscious. Its a task very extreme working conditions last?
with Moebius. Because in the cinema everyone has an that consists in delving deep into your How much time does it take you to make
Moebius is the same. Hes a friend. Weve idea, so you have to listen to those ideas, unconscious, thats how I go about it. your films? Can it sometimes go on for
been working together for 20 years! But but you also have to be able to say no to My quest is thoroughly unrational. For months, or even years?
hes a friend in a different sense. Weve all of them, and have the belief that me, the foe of the cinema is Hitchcock, No, no! I made El Topo in eight weeks.
never had a discussion, for example. We youll manage to do it. In the cinema you because everything in his movies is The shooting of The Sacred Mountain
dont see one another. Its more a pursue poetry but its very difficult to totally constructed and thought out, even had to be stopped for six weeks... and in
working friendship. Weve done a whole achieve it because its a collective work the picture and the imagery. For me all it lasted 20 or 24 weeks, so I had to
lot of projects together and thats what and poetry is the most individual thing thats anti-film if ever there was. I see the make it in something like 16 weeks. But
binds us together, but we dont discuss there is. Unless you turn it into a game cinema as a research tool, which departs thats a lot for me! Santa Sangre took me

Pedro Reyes eight weeks, two months. But for me they likewise unplanned, giving pride of saying: poetry cant be sold! Why should me, one of the greatest works in the
Preaching for the birds
(or Uccelato and thats an awfully long time. place to the unforeseen, the off-the-cuff, my films be sold? Theyre gifts that I history of humankind. Just as the
Uccelini) 2003. to discontinuities and breaks? make. Pyramids and the Aztec calendar are
But compared with other shoots for such Oh no! The shooting time is strictly immense things... So Ive been studying
complex movies... planned out. When I say five weeks that But what happened with the producer the Tarot for years, and working with it,
You know, when you dont have any means five weeks! Because theres the Klein? and Ive gradually become something of a
money, you have to act fast. time of the producer and the producer, He wanted me to make an erotic film for Tarot specialist.
for his part, has to do his sums! Each him, but I got out of that and didnt make
In a way weve come full circle back to week costs a given sum of money, so it. So he said: Nobody will ever again And have you had Tarot masters?
the question of time, to that conception we draw up a minimum budget, and we see your movies. He decided that. Hes Yes, in the sense that I met someone who
of time that is in your films, and which I have to stick to it because if you go over mad! And he has in fact stopped people explained to me the Tarot that he liked,
find so interesting. it, its disastrous! On the other hand, seeing my films. But years have since and I didnt know anything about it then,
What do you mean by conception of yes, its in the story that I break and passed and the public has seen them all but this person told me about it. Its the
time? I dont quite see what you mean by shatter time, I dont tell a story which the same. Tarot itself, however, that is your master,
that... imitates real time, that doesnt interest your teacher. You can see all the books
me... Theres still something else we havent there. Its a whole library. I went to the
What I mean is that people see in your talked about, and thats those caf Bibliothque Nationale for a year or two,
films a sort of kaleidoscope of different And I wanted to know what you think meetings every Wednesday, where you then I concentrated on the Marseilles
times and differentiated experiences. about these new communication do Tarot readings... and then theres Tarot over a four-year period. In all, Ive
Okay. Yes, what I want to do is break technologies, as well as the production of your deep interest in the origins of the studied the Tarot more than a doctor
shattertime. In El Topo you dont know images with the DVD, because, thanks Tarot... studies medicine! In the Panique group
if the character is dead, if hes naked, or if to computers and software, its possible The origins of the Tarot are mysterious. each one of us had a particular pastime
what is involved is a rebirth. You dont to remake a film almost ad infinitum. There are lots of theories: some people we were fond of. For me it was the Tarot,
know if the time is past. All that is done In a sense, though, its of paramount say it comes from Egypt, others from Mars for Arrabal is was chess...
in order to break the linear notion of time. importance to me. Because you know and extra-terrestrials. There are people
Up until then this is what I endeavoured that the producer Allen Klein has been who also say that Adam invented it Like Duchamp.
to do. In the film I want to make, theres trying for 30 years to stop my films being there are thousands of theories! The Yes. And for Topor it was detective novels,
a person who remains confined, and you seen. I was actually banned from showing oldest known Tarots date from 1200 to crime thrillers, and he was a specialist in
dont know if this person is in time or in them in moviehouses! So the few copies I 1300. But, in the Marseilles Tarot, there that kind of literature. He had thousands
eternity. did have I gave to pirates, and all over the is such a store of symbols, wisdom and of such books. Im finding your interview
world my films have been distributed by occult things that the Tarot represents, for fun! Im having a lot of fun!
And do your shoots have some pirates. And Ive never earned a cent from
relationship with analogous time: are that. But its all fine, as we were just

You can make a work of art
without anyone knowing about it,
except the person to whom its given.
A friend of mine was at a reading you gave, Thats right. As I was just saying: life is a do now with these few years remaining to knowing about it, except the person to
and he told me that youre still putting on continuation, Ive proceeded from the me? Im not talking about art here, but whom its given. If this is important for
happenings, micro-happenings, based on happening to an art which heals. But its not rather about what I can do in everyday me, its because on the path of initiation,
readings of your books. Id like to know what people call art therapy, which means life. Its with this in mind that Ive started celebrity is the biggest obstacle, so my
what part these readings play, and these getting mad people to produce paintings to invent techniques for helping other utopia tends to the practice of totally
kinds of little happenings that you do. and poems. Its rather that the therapy itself people. For me, art really has to do with anonymous acts... The goal is to achieve
lll give you an example. For the publication becomes a kind of art. So I muster all my this, you do a thing for a single person, a anonymity. Okay, Im a human being, I
of my book The Dance of Reality, a kind of artistic and theatrical experience, and all this private and singular act. Performance is want to satisfy my ego, and Ive got signed
lecture was organized at The House of to heal, for example, a woman suffering always a bit vain, and conceited. You works, but apart from all that I do
America in Madrid. I introduced myself. from agoraphobia, a person who hadnt left make art to be applauded, too, for a anonymous things.
There were 800 people in the audience and her own home for 15 years! By using public, to be able to say that youre an
they couldnt all get in, so I stood in front of theatre tricks... artist. In these things Im doing I dont Most of the scientists with Nobel prizes
them and talked with the people. If you call myself an artist, Im not looking for stopped doing interesting work as soon
present me with a problem, Ill come up Fantastic. applause, or recognition. Its private and I as they had become famous.
with solutions, and Ill work with people. I It a technique that I call post- concentrate on people one by one. Its like Celebrity is an obstacle.
do that, its true. psychoanalytical because it takes things the Tarot. The Tarot is for a single person,
further. Ive done this quietly... thats all. Can you please talk more about micro
So its not a lecture with the speaker and macro utopias?
separate from his audience. But with regard to this issue of the What youre telling me now is very Personally Im a minimalist. Because Ive
No, its not a lecture. For example, I arrive performance, Im very interested in the interesting in relation to the problem of realized the immensity of the world and
without any notes, I come just to see whats notion of the open score that John Cage utopia. For the term has been devalued the universe and Ive realized how small
happening. I often do that. In October a new talked about. because for a while it encompassed the we are. So I believe in minimal utopias
book of my stories is going to be published, Look, Ive done artistic, public, normal concept of the global political and social and I also believe in miracles. But in
and theres already a lecture planned in things. Books, and films, and so on. Lets model that people try to impose on other small miracles. There are small
Madrid. I did the same thing in Bilbao, too. leave all that on one side.... What have I got people. Now if one accepts calling this telepathic acts, and miraculous things
A thousand people turned up! Ive done this on the other side? First of all theres this concept a macro-utopia, what youre which happen on a microscopic scale.
in several Italian cities. Each time the thing which, as time passes, Im beginning doing is rather a kind of micro-utopia, This exists. But Ive also learnt to create
presentation of my book becomes a kind of to understand: Im mortal, and every day I and above all a concrete and achievable false miracles! For example, I once saw
collective healing. have less time than the day before, so I tell Yes, its the minimal, day-to-day utopia. a tramp lying on the ground fast asleep,
myself that Ive still got a given number of But above all theres another important and I slipped 100 euros into his pocket.
So in fact the Happenings have turned into years. And the real question, the one thats aspect to this: its the fact that you can So when he woke up and found that
therapeutic acts of a sort? really worth asking, is: what am I going to make a work of art without anyone 100 euro note, something miraculous

So I believe in minimal utopias
and I also believe in miracles.
But in small miracles.
happened! You can work mini-miracles stop fighting. You dont enter the world the Alejandro Jodorowsky
Fabulas Panicas
like that, anonymously... way you enter a fight, but you move 1967 -1973
forward in it like a sugar lump dissolving Taken from the book
Fabulas Panicas de
Have you got other examples of small in tea.
Alexandro Jodorowsky.
miracles? Ed. Grijalbo. Mexico.
Yes. I left a poem that I liked in a small Thats a very beautiful ending.
box, in the street. So that someone would Thanks a lot.
find that pretty little box with the poem
Translated by: Simon Pleasance
inside. Thats something thats easy
enough to do, too. The poem was the only
copy, and I dont know who read it and
he, or she, doesnt know who wrote it.
And staying with these ideas of

anonymous miracles, and the theatre of
healing, I read that book, which I like a
lot: The Tree of the Hanged God, with
that beautiful quotation by Cocteau as its
sub-title: Its in its genealogical tree that
the bird sings best. And in that book
theres the idea that each reader can
take his own family history and make a
sort of mythology out of himself. Theres
always the idea of giving strength and
means of action to the reader, and the
viewer.
Yes, its the same thing. You know, Ive
stopped comparing art with a boxing
match. When I arrived in the world of
artists, they all behaved like boxers. They
wanted to be world champions and the
best. Theres a moment in life when you

CURATORS STATEMENTS
Jochen Volz
Dreaming of...
Jochen Volz Matthew Barney being commissioned to choreograph and design the human Tom Z composing an updated German anthem . . .
is curator at Portikus
Frankfurt am Main, invasion of Mars . . .
Germany. Adrian Williams writing and illustrating her own Bestiario . . .
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster shooting her first feature film . . .
Olafur Eliasson installing his Very Large Kaleidoscope on the moon, looking onto
John Bock giving science classes on television . . . earth . . .
Pascale Marthine Tayou renaming the streets of Paris . . . Haegue Yang establishing a non-linear way of counting . . .
Jason Rhoades opening his own chain of fast-food restaurants . . . Thomas Bayrle telling 1001 good-night stories . . .
Gustavo Artigas setting up new rules for the next world championship in soccer . . . Tomas Saraceno teaching us how to fly . . .
Peter Cook finally realizing his Blow-Out Village . . . Pier Paolo Pasolini endlessly discussing his own very last question in Decameron:
I wonder . . . Why produce a work of art when its nice just to dream about it?
Koo Jeong-a being responsible for the snow from now on . . .
Ceal Floyer going for Plan B . . .
Marepes Sweet Sky of Santo Antonio being possible to taste all over the world . . .
Marjetica Potr building a large float, a kind of Noahs ark . . .
Pae White introducing a whole new traffic and navigation system . . .

CURATORS STATEMENTS
fare in BN
Peio Aguirre, Leire Vergara
The Power of
Abstract Dreaming
Peio Aguirre and Leire There is a natural way of thinking about Utopia as a stream of dreaming. Utopia, in
Vergara are members
of the curatorial team this regard, is based on the imagined contrast of what is possible to what is
of D.A.E., Donostiako impossible. This confrontation is not timeless, however, but neither does it follow
Arte Ekinbideak,
an art organization
the logic of past-present-future. The unique logic of Utopia is somewhat anarchistic,
based in Donostia - in the sense that is driven by an expanded projection that covers up the future with
San Sebastin, Spain. fragments from other times. This means there are always images that have been
D.A.E. will participate in
Manifesta 5, Donostia - produced with this same goal of confronting reality with unreality, and we can use
San Sebastin 2004 them later and juxtapose them again and again without end. It is actually here, in 2
always limitless. Some of the sculptures he produced in the past he used in In conversation with
1
Taken from the this endless projection, where their potential should be considered. In a certain way, Nestor Basterretxea.
Catalogue Nestor the architecture of the Basque artist Nestor Basterretxea gives us an opportunity to designing architectural prototypes that began with what might be conceived as Caserio means the
Basterretxea in the
enter this new order of Utopia. impossible architecture. Basterretxea says, I work with projects of finished traditional Basque
Museo San Telmo, farmhouse
buildings. I even design the final aspect of the building. My work responds to a total
Donostia-San Sebastin
2003, p. 16 Nestor Basterretxea, born in 1924 in the Basque town of Bermeo, immigrated to creative liberation; never stopped by budget and technical limitations; but there is 3
Sabin Etxea
always a consideration that goes towards a possible reality. I think that my designs is the name of the
Argentina during World War II when he was still a young boy. Even then, he was Headquarters of Basque
aware that his best talent was drawing, and he quickly found his first paying job as are feasible and practical ideas, they dont correspond to an impossible Nationalist Party.
a draftsman for Nestl in Buenos Aires. Some time later, he met Jorge Oteiza in architecture.1 The name is taken
from the founder of the
Chile during his own exile, and they began a lifelong friendship. Most of his architectural proposals have developed from commissions by public Nationalist Party,
institutions to design museums, libraries, churches, or institutional buildings, but Sabino Arana Goiri
(1865-1903)
Basterretxea belongs to the generation of artists who believed that the construction very little of his work has been built. He usually cites the fact that architects do not
of a new imaginary world is the best way to use aesthetics in social transformations. understand his work; they are always introducing obstacles to his projects that are,
His body of work covers a wide range of media, such as painting, sculpture, film, nevertheless, totally constructible.
furniture design, and architecture. His main interest has always been dealing with
structures that escape their predetermined conditions. The artist refers to
architecture as the space of free creation that should never be self-limiting but

fare in BN
Francos death, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) reclaimed the building site.
Arzalluz, the former president of the PNV, approached Basterretxea and Oteiza to
design the project of rebuilding Sabin Etxea. As an example of the close relationship
between the formal language of the sculpture of both artists and their own
relationship with architecture, Basterretxea explains that once when visiting Oteizas
studio, he suddenly noticed a beautiful sculpture and said to Oteiza: There is the
building; that is the building.4 And so they simply proposed a construction that
came directly from the prototype of a sculpture. In the end, the building was not
Photomontage of the constructed in accordance with the artists plans; instead a conventional design was
In 1957, Basterretxea designed his own house and studio in Irn, Gipuzkoa, in the
architectural proposal. chosen. Once more, this example reminds us that the potential of artistic
Courtesy: Nestor Basque Country, a house that he shared for almost ten years with Jorge Oteiza. The
transformation must be confront everything possible and impossible, but it also
Basterretxea house resembles a rationalist construction, in Basterretxea words, a petit Le
shows us that any kind of utopian thought should always project change, at least
4
Ibid. Nestor
Corbusier, and in Oteizas, the new Basque caserio.2 While they lived together,
as a mere possibility.
Basterretxea, p. both artists shared projects that were conceived as cultural and collective
47photo credits productions for what could be called a new Basque collectivism. These projects, for
belonging to the images
of D.A.E Ive sent before the most part, remain lost. The house, however, remains as the only architecture
designed and built by Basterretxea. And it is also his most rationalist work. The rest
of his architectural work is characterized by more of a semi-surrealist influence,
perhaps due to the fact that his approach to architecture comes directly from
sculpture. This constitutes his own personal language, which originates in the
accumulation of a mature formalism developed from his early works to the latest
designs. That is the case with the Sabin Etxea project, which involved replacing the
Basque Nationalist Party building that was knocked down by the Falangists when
they took Bilbao during the Spanish Civil War.3 The Falangist troops threw every last
stone into the river to destroy any vestige of early nationalist Basque idealism. After

WHW
is a Zagreb-based
independent curatorial
team. Its members are
Ivet urlin, Ana Devi,
Nataa Ili and Sabina
Sabolovi
ARTISTS PROJECTS
Una Szeemann
The Floating
Love Parade
Una Szeemann
is an artist based in
Switzerland and New CORDERIE
York. She participated
in the MAK-Schindler
Artist and Architects My story starts with the chaos Jason Rhoades carries in his trousers (The Theater in
Residence Programme My Dick), continues through the simplicity of an orgasm, shows how eroticism has
in Los Angeles (2003),
where she produced a
for centuries always been central in every country and social class, and, after an
video combining Monte exhausting exercise well, smoke a cigarette (Paul Graham), have forza and
Verit (the Swiss Italian coraggio (Onofre), and start all over again.
colony) and Hollywood.
Her actors are artists, The Floating Love Parade
like Jason Rhoades, The representation of death from AIDS, or something else, can be extremely poetic
Paul McCarthy,
Lawrence Weiner, a.o. After having worked for a month with Harald Szeemann and the team in the (Felix Gonzalez-Torres) or, as a parallel, dark and scary (Elisar von Kupffer), but at
Currently shes showing
Arsenale area installing the Platea dellUmanit, I got to know every corner, wall, the end of the suffering, you enter il chiaro mondo dei beati (the world of light and
the work Montewood
Hollyverit in the art piece, disaster, laugh, piece of gossip. . . purity of the blessed).
exhibition
Contemporanea Giovani Sleeping is a little bit like dying, or the other way round (Sophie Calle), and when
2, tra cronaca e storia I just had this Mission Impossible idea to create another exhibition in the space
in Como, which also and architecture of what once was called the Platea dellUmanit and is now The you wake up, you overcome the mountain (Stephan Huber). A German expression
will be shown at the says ber den Berg sein, meaning you did it, you solved the problem.
Basel Art Fair for the Floating Love Parade.
Bundespreis (Swiss
National Art Prize),
My background is film, so what Im trying to do in this exhibition is tell a story using Love when it starts is such an eruption of desire, intensity, and passion; we want
and at Samedi Video
at Gallery Air de Paris, (and sometimes abusing) artworks. Im trying to represent in a funny ironic way to be surrounded by everything that is for us or belongs to the other, like love letters
in Paris. New work different facets of the journey of a love story, because thats all it is about, at least (Tracey Emin). And if love lasts, sometimes you get to wear that beautiful white
exploring the failure dress (Chantal Michel).
of Michael Jacksons for this project! Hope you enjoy the journey!
search for beauty will
be shown in the group Together we are stronger! Couples that last show us it is really possible like
exhibition The Beauty Una Szeemann
of Failure / the Failure Gilbert and George, Eva & Adele, tits and bottoms (Friederike Pezold and Yoko Ono).
of Beauty at the Joan
Mir Foundation as part
of the programme for
Otto Mhl condemned the nuclear family represented by Stefan Banz (daughter,
the Universal Forum son, wife, and husband), but as we all know by now (after his seven years in
of Cultures 2004 in prison), his everybody with everyone and it doesnt matter who is whose child, isnt
Barcelona. Also shes
working on a project the best way to create a family, either.
featuring Pablo
Escobars estate.
Relationships can be so painful, transforming pureness into negative devotion or
aggression (Nan Goldin). But incompatibility is possible, so as the panda says to

ARSENALE
72 70 TESE E GIARDINO
DELLE VERGINI
71 69
LIERIE
ARTIG
67-68 CORDERIE 31. Zhao Bandi ARTIGLIERIE
TTO 53
ISOLO 59 51 1. Jason Rhoades 32. Charles Sandison 52. Balthasar Burkhard
54 52
61 60 57 56 2. Evolution of the man 33. Tracey Ermin, Georgina 53. Leonardo da Vinci
55 3. Evolution of womans Starr, Gillian Wearing 54. Rainer Ganahl
63 58
beauty 34. Andreas Gursky 55. Sam Taylor - Wood
GAGGIANDRE 62 49 50
64 4. Fantastische Vier 35. Flower shop 56. Zhang Pelli
66 47 48 5. Robert Ryman 36. Wolfgang Tillmans 57. Ernesto Neto
65 44 46 6. Alessandra Tesi 37. Ingeborg Lscher 58. Simone Bhm
45 7. Urs Lthi Ying Bo 59. Pipilotti Rist
42 42
8. Erotic paintings 38. Rikrit Tiravanija 60. Candice Brice
41 43 40
9. Paul Graham 39. Christian Jankowski 61. Andy Warhol
39
38 10. Rosa Brckl, 40. Pipilotti Rist 61. Egoyan / Sarmento
37
33 Gregor Schmoll 41. Gao Brothers 63. Berta Fischer
36 35
32 11. Joao Onofre 42. Andy Warhol 64. Presentation
29 34 31 12. Lovett / Codagnone 43. Ivana Falconi platform for young
CORDERIE
30
28 13. Elisar von Kupfer 44. Anna Oppermann designers
27 14. Dark room 45. Monica Bonvicini
25 26 15. Felix Gonzales - Torres 46. Ana Laura Alez ISOLOTTO
24 24 16. Dieter Detzner 47. Barbara Bloom 65. Piotr Uklanski
22 23 21
19 18 20 17. Sophie Calle 48. Chantal Michel 66. Champagne & Oyster Bar
18. Stephan Huber 49. Cindy Sherman
17 17 19. Sex in film 50. Charles Ray GAGGIANDRE
13
16 18 20. Tracey Ermin 51. Beate Uhse shop 67. Condom shop
13 15 21. Wedding 68. Champagne and
14 15
22. Chantal Michel Oyster Bar
12 11
23. Abramovi / Ulay
9
10 24. Couples TESE DELLE VERGINI E
8 8 25. Otto Mhl GIARDINO DELLE VERGINI
7 26. Stefan Banz 69. Nobuyoshi Araki
5 4 6 27. Opera lounge 70. Panamarenko
2 3 28. Antoni Abad 71. Ana Laura Alez
29. Chriss Cunningham 72. Jeff Koons
1 30. Nan Goldin

Zhao Bandi, Maybe we dont really love each other. ISOLOTTO
Love stories can end in tragedies, like Tristan and Isoldes, or simply vanish, in the
way Antoni Abad shows it to us: rats eating away at the word love written with No better place than this to express sexiness while dancing, drink champagne, and
cheese from a pizza. meet someone. (Piotr Uklanski)
What is left? Precisely, friendship. GAGGIANDRE
Make fun of our friends, like Tracey Emin, Georgina Starr and Gillian Wearing Venice is the city of lovers; if you are affected by its romanticism and dont like loud
imitating each other, cooking with friends (Rirkrit Tiravanija) playing with friends music, there is another champagne bar outdoors by the water.
(Ingeborg Lscher), meeting with thousands of people you dont know but who all
have the same interest, like the Toten Hosen (Andreas Gursky). A famous condom company in Italy has a fantastic slogan: Fare bene lamore, fa
bene allamore (To make good love, is good for love), so if you need them, you
Women can be housewives (Anna Oppermann) and become mad in that role can buy them in the condom shop.
(Monica Bonvicini). Sometimes they become icons, like Marilyn Monroe (Andy
Warhol). The work of Ivana Falconi shows how dangerous it can be to be a doll: TESE DELLE VERGINI E GIARDINO DELLE VERGINI
Hundreds of little dolls caught in mousetraps.
When we were children, we played with Barbie and Ken; now big Ken (Charles Ray) At the end of the journey, love explodes in different images from flower fucking
still wants to play with dirty Barbie (Cindy Sherman), and if fantasy takes a rest, we (Araki) to the desire or the feeling of flying (Panamarenko), becoming upside-down
profit from the toy-desire. . . playground, entering the huge Beate Uhse shop. astronauts and being part of the universe (Ana Laura Alez), and if at the beginning
Woman and man are not only toys; they also play with them. Jason Rhoades had a chaotic sex organ, now the act between Ciciolina and Jeff
Koons is pure and clear as glass.
ARTIGLIERIE
Even if the male Jesus (Leonardo da Vinci) and the female Jesus (Sam Taylor-
Wood) have not yet confronted each other, Reiner Ganahl is trying hard to build up
communication between them. Im not sure if learning Korean will really help, but
Im sure that our common language is seduction.
Either it comes from smell (Ernesto Neto), love songs (Simone Bhm), magic flying
silver pillows (Andy Warhol), food entering a sexy moth and finding its exit from
Pippilotti Rists beautiful ass hole. Playing in a labyrinth looking for someone (Berta
Fischer), and if no one was in the labyrinth, then next door there is a disco.

CORDERIE
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CURATORS STATEMENTS
Gregor Jansen
Lets
Destroy the Earth
but Keep Humans
Gregor Jansen Night pictures are visually uncertain effects of the virtual a power and an invisible
is a Aachen-based
free-lance curator, doubling, an archived timelessness, a non-legitimacy over the path of human
lecturer and writer, imprecision. A new old way of seeing a dream.
who is especially
interested in the wide
field of fine distinctions. Against the many assassinations of art (also against itself) are posed the invocations
of arts immortality that have fondly been referred to as the victory of knowledge.
The title is borrowed from
Keith Farquhars similarly Aesthetics and art history desire dead works of art in order to tell these works who
named exhibition in they are, in order to be able to say something true and final about history itself
2003-2004 at kjubh
Kunstverein, Cologne. the secret desire for the end of art is thus understandable.
This text is indebted
to some of the thoughts of
Georges Didi-Hubermann,
The banality of the death of art has been understood as a caricature of the dialectic
Henri Michaux, and against forgetting, aimed at the apparently avoidable loss of the past but the
Slavoj iek. knowledge proves to be a caricature of the absolute when it is applied to works of
Drawings by art: everything is visible!
Zilla Leutenegger The tyranny of the visible is in this respect a veil of knowledge that is produced
a Zrich-based artist.
Current works will be artificially and draped over the works of art.
presented this year
at the Bndner
Kunstmuseum (Chur),
In contemporary museums, particularly in exhibitions, art is alive, exciting, gripping;
Galerie Peter Kilchmann it becomes an experiment, an adventure and a laboratory. Here, presence becomes
(Zrich), Contemporary an argument for enlightenment, scientific cognition becomes conscience, the
Art Centre Vilnius, MOCA
Taipei and Gwangju material a touchstone of balance, presence a fact of history, and existence, a
Biennale. programmatic for an opposing model of representation.

And the demand is large, so very large that new resources and new sources of
images are being tapped, new mysteries are being revealed and new certainties
uttered in order to dispense with old certainties, if only briefly. Whatever doesnt last
or please or hold its own must go: the market (and the psyche) demands this
courage to criticize installation objectivism.
That is not my dream but I do dream of the desire (before the demand), of the
opening (instead of the veil), of the place (instead of the installation). No guarantee
of a spectacle whose society we are, no revelation whose price is created by the
vanguards or associations of exclusivity, is worth the sleep of the irrational.
I dream of the fissure in a picture; I dream of the works of art and their methods of
manifestation, of their opinions, aimed at us, which propagate astonishment and
non-knowledge in their visual superabundance, a glimpse that recedes, and that
doesnt wrest a justification for its existence from its effect or from a symptom of the
art of life. No, dreaming, I see pictures as impediments, negative nexuses of
tensions like symptoms that I love as myself!
Translated by: Brian Poole

CURATORS STATEMENTS
Luca Cerizza
Ill Let You Be

in My Dream,
if I Can Be
in Your Dream
1
Luca Cerizza I try to remember the exhibitions of my dreams and realize that, deep down in my by now, removed from any precise socio-historical condition, and the possibility of
(born Milan, 1969)
is a free-lance curator never completely fulfilled desires, there is always the pursuit of the same applying it or reworking it according to the context, finding that it is always
and writer living indeterminate condition. It is a place never reached, a state of mind that comes, meaningful and apt.
in Berlin and Milan.
above all, from forms of production and transmission associated with sound, with
1
Bob Dylan, music. I must have seen Bob Dylan in concert half a dozen times. For about ten years he
improvising new words has been constantly on tour, like a minstrel from bygone days, moving endlessly
to his song I Shall Be
Free No. 10, during a I have always been fascinated by the way a given nucleus/structure/form of sound from city to city. Each time, I hear different versions of the same songs: the tempo
concert in the film Dont (originating more than original) can be transmitted across time, undergoing changes, the voice, the pronunciation of certain words; he stretches them, shortens
Look Back [1965].
continuous modifications and adjustments in an infinite chain of variations and them, breaks them up, pulls them as far as they will go, to the point of making these
transformations. songs unrecognizable. Dylan has always, I think, been ceaselessly at work on the
deconstruction and rewriting of himself, his story and, perhaps, his myth. As if the
I am thinking above all of folk music (ballads, folksongs, blues, spirituals), works songs were no longer his but had become open, malleable material with a life of
often impossible to attribute to a given author, but which have been continuously their own, more a part of the oral tradition than that of reproducibility. Each time,
redefined and rewritten in an oral tradition, by artists who moved from place to he seems to challenge the very possibility of being an author, perhaps so as to
place, bringing a melody or narrative nucleus with them, which might then be escape from the static condition of mechanical reproduction. For Dylan, cutting a
absorbed, altered and transmitted elsewhere. In this chain of passages, the record seems to be just a passage, and perhaps not the most important one, in an
original (or the latest version) is rewritten in a series of versions that change infinite chain of interpretations that can exist only in the dimension of live
according to the cultural, social and political conditions with which it establishes a performance.
relationship.
The digital era has redefined the possibilities of these procedures, shaping them
I am fascinated by the process of transmission, the infinite malleability of material, around new techniques and new forms of consumption. The appropriation, sharing
its constant transformation and ceaseless movement. I am interested, certainly, in and swapping of musical and narrative material that were part of the oral tradition
the dimension of time and the context, and the way these factors influence the now take the form of bytes. File-sharing, sampling, remixing, cover versions, DJs,
transmission, construction and perception of a form or a concept. I imagine elastic the heteronym, the editor, the programmer: these figures of our postmodern age are
spaces. I do not have much faith in fixed, ideal identity. Everything is transformed, often updates of archaic entities. Once again, the limits of originality are being
nothing is created, as someone said. tested, challenging our conception of the author. Once sound material becomes
digital, it also becomes malleable, just as easily modified as oral material. Sound is
I am listening to different versions of a traditional American ballad. Its title is Stager increasingly open, a territory that can be entered and crossed. And we too, more
Lee, or Stack O Lee, or Stagolee, or Stacker Lee, or Stack a Lee, depending on and more often, find ourselves crossed by continuous sound. Ambient music,
whether it is being sung by Mississippi John Hurt, Woody Guthrie, Dave van Ronk, background noise, the pervasive banality of a general uniformity: will the future be
Bob Dylan, or Nick Cave. I like this idea of an almost mythical nucleus, timeless nothing but Muzak?

Carsten Nicolai, Bit In an era of extreme postproduction, of increasingly rapid immaterial communications, . . . make something which experiences, reacts to its environment, Mika Vainio, 3x Wall
Waves, MICAMOCA, Clocks, MICAMOCA,
Milan, 2001. of the production-reproduction of forms as the result of an undistinguishable mass of changes, is non-stable. . . Milan, 2001.
This is one of the works stratifications, I imagine exhibitions as continuous remixing, file-sharing, sampling, Three clocks and a bass
presented in the amplifier were installed
exhibition Perspectives
covers of covers, infinite transmission chains of data, in constant mutation. So the . . . make something indeterminate, which always looks different, on a wall at the end
(sound architectures), curator is the DJ, the editor, the producer, a figure who connects the ideas and the shape of which cannot be predicted precisely. . . of a long corridor.
co-curated with Daniela sensibilities of others in new possibilities, joining different sources in new hybrids. But The sounds produced
Cascella, which featured by the minute hands
sound and light he is also the space where encounters happen, the platform that hosts new relations, . . . make something which cannot perform without the assistance of the three clocks were
installations by Ryoji the place where identities are redefined. of its environment. . . processed and amplified
Ikeda, Carsten Nicolai, to create a wave of low
Mika Vainio leading and slightly staggered
figures in minimal- I dream of shows involving these modes and these possibilities: I try to imagine . . . make something which reacts to light and temperature changes, is subject sounds.
electronic music
in a former industrial
visions of a future of new communications and new types of consumption, revising to air currents and depends, in its functioning, on the forces of gravity. . .
area of Milan. Each models of production and reception, recalling the thoughts of Hans Haacke, who
artist used a different back in 1965 called for new possibilities of artistic production: . . . make something which the spectator handles, with which he plays,
register of sonic
frequencies that could and thus animates it. . .
eventually overlap and
mix together according
to the movements . . . make something which lives in time and makes the spectator
of the visitors in the experience time. . .
open space. The wall
drawing (approximately
4 m. x 32 m.) is a . . . articulate something Natural. . .
graphic and slightly
optical representation
of three sinusoidal
waves, a kind
of portrait of this close
collaboration (the
first ever among these
artists).

Manfred Pernice, Take No. 1 Take No. 2 Robert Barry,
Sean Snyder, Banana, Nothing/Something,
Galleria Massimo Galleria Massimo
Minini, Brescia, 2003. A show without much to show. . . I imagine working as curator of the same show for months, maybe even years. An Minini, Brescia, 2004.
For the first time these A text in black marble
two artists were asked
almost infinite process. To design a platform, an initial curatorial nucleus that is to be placed on the floor
to work together for a Instead, its a situation: the possibility of a space through which we find ourselves modified in the various facilities that host the show. Each version will be altered (1999). This was the
collaborative project. walking, taking part in ever new relationships in the work-context-audience according to the necessities of the exhibition space and the socio-cultural context last work on display in
The result of this the show Dont expect
process was an dynamic. Maybe just a simple alteration of our habitual everyday condition, or of with which it interacts, while bearing previous memories and experiences. anything, which also
investigation of urban the identity of a physical space, in ways as mimetic, ecological, informal as presented works by
and socio-economic Tino Sehgal and Ian
developments in recent possible. Questioning the relationship between foreground and background, author Like a piece of music subjected to constant remixing, in every version certain Wilson. The show was
Berlin history, and and audience, visible and invisible, form and experience. A place where new characteristics of the show will stand out more than others, depending upon the conceived as an
especially in the investigation of some
so-called Banana,
conditions are suggested rather than imposed, where the movement of the viewer new needs of the operators. A chain of variations that never assume a stable form. of the most frequently
an almost abandoned is an integral part of the itinerary, a decisive component because it can continuously A continuos mise en scne. A series of alternative takes. encountered topics in
area close to be altered, redefined, reconstructed. By reducing the weight and amount of various generations of
Alexanderplatz. conceptual artists, from
This picture shows information, space is left for active, conscious participation, for a political Second variation the dematerialization
the second and smallest awareness of ones own possibilities and ones own role. Transmit this initial nucleus and let it be remixed by different curators. of the art object to the
room in the exhibition, use of oral and textual
where contributions language as artistic
by the two artists were Little or nothing on the walls, few images, definitely few objects. Somewhat more Take No. 3 tools.
literally merging with
each other.
immaterial communications, states hard to constrict in form. Surely sound, words,
natural elements, action. A place that is always shift, change, definition. An immaterial space constructed amidst the various television broadcasting towers
Continuously negotiated between the artist and the viewer, in a multiplicity of scattered around Europe: a network between Munich, Berlin, Budapest, Dresden,
viewpoints, an open narrative. Everything can overlap. Nothing exists on its own, Vilnius, Tallin. . . Exchange and interaction of images, sounds and words through
but only in the possibility of relation. A platform for questioning of modes of these transmission points. Work on the different timing of the circular movement of
production and possible alternatives. the towers, on synchrony and asynchrony. Synchronize yourself. Mix the different
sources, live. Construct a continuous dialogue. Broadcast everything via
Walls that move and constantly define the space and our relationship to it. Bodies radio/television/Internet.
that are inhabited by work, but in natural, mimetic ways. Words barely visible on
Translated by: Stephen Piccolo
walls, perceived in different ways from different vantage points. Transmission of
magnetic waves, or telepathic communication, a handshake. A barely perceptible
sound that makes the floor vibrate slightly, a hole in the roof to let the sunlight in.
A guided tour as an ulterior architecture that sustains the show. A work that can
only be narrated. An action that happens somewhere else. Or perhaps only in our
imagination. Exhibition as word of mouth, a story that travels on the grapevine.

CURATORS STATEMENTS
Victor Palacios
Dreaming is the
Most Ancient
Aesthetic Activity.
Victor Palacios Henry Fselis painting The Nightmare always springs to mind whenever I hear that It is a fact that curators dream. We dream in a better world, in black boxes, in
(Mexico 1973) studied
History of Art and dreaming is the point of departure for an essay, art exhibition, informal talk, or any decrepit utopias, in sexy theory. And thats not all, we also dream of what the
Spanish Literature kind of project, in fact. I came across this eighteenth-century painting several years spectators are dreaming, of latitudes that become forms, of public art, of new art
at the Universidad
Nacional Autonoma
ago on the cover of a book by Jorge Luis Borges entitled Siete Noches. Although I spaces, etc. But most of all, we dream of multiple, flexible and simultaneous
de Mexico and recently have never seen The Nightmare with my own eyes, this artwork, together with platforms to set up our curatorial statements. In one way or another, the strength of
finished De Appel Borges text about the experience of dreaming, generated in me a strong interest in the curatorial discourse in contemporary art is based on its capacity to produce a
Curatorial Training
Programme this daily activity. sort of open field to keep dreaming forward. At present, it seems clear that the
in Amsterdam, curatorial sphere is more and more based on hyper-fragmentation, multiplicity and
the Netherlands.
The recent attention curatorial work has shown toward the relationships between simultaneous temporal and spatial displacements.
1
Jorge Luis Borges. dreaming, hope, utopia, and contemporary art is based on the current deep need to Obviously, the sort of general structure that contemporary art events share is based
Siete noches. Fondo de
Cultura Economica,
analyze and redefine the way imagination relates to concrete social phenomena. on the socio-political reality that defines the actual global order and its neoliberal
1980. Mexico. p. 47 Whether directed to a collectivity or focused on individual and existential matters, economic system. We find ourselves, then, in a complex situation. On the one hand,
2
this connection between art and different sorts of imaginary constructions has been curatorial discourse wants to mirror and picture current socio-political
Jean Baudrillard,
Impossible Exchange, stressed in recent exhibitions. But why is this taking place now? Where does the circumstances, while on the other, it intends to generate innovative thoughts and
Verso, London, 2001. urgent necessity to rethink the meaning of dreaming come from? Is this initiative comments on such an abstract notion as dreaming forward. Clearly, art in itself has
p. 6
based mainly on the already chronic modernist urge to find new and collective hope the potential to generate these two actions simultaneously and in multiple forms.
for the near future? Nevertheless, this inner potentiality of art seems in danger when the curatorial
discourse takes total control of the relationship between artworks and audiences. In
As Borges states, dreams are by nature multiple and simultaneous. Nevertheless, as my opinion, there is now an increasing contradiction in rhythm and speed between
soon as we try to describe them, we are always forced to give them a narrative contemporary artistic practice and the current curatorial urge to grasp and decode
construction, a successive order in which sensations and events are deconstructed the near future. And this is entirely related to dreaming and the creative process.
by linear thinking. In that sense, dreams are faster than memory and even more Borges says, While dreaming we invent so fast that we mingle our thoughts with
complex than actual fact. There is no way to bring them to so-called reality without what we are inventing. In regard to this, I could say that curating and dreaming
betraying or violating their own nature. Dreams are puzzles, riddles that vanish share a common ground. Curating and dreaming are both activities in which it is
when we try to solve them by rational understanding. But these last comments impossible to separate our thoughts from what we are simultaneously inventing.
should be taken merely as superficial and flexible boundaries between dreaming and There is no real pause, no free time, no rest. Audiences, actors, the stage, and the
the real. In this regard, it may be useful to quote Jean Baudrillards metaphysic script are always demanding more and more dreams to perform, even if those
statement: There is not enough room both for the world and its double. So there dreams turn out to be terrible nightmares.
can be no verifying of the world. This is, indeed, why reality is an imposture. Being
without possible verification, the world is a fundamental illusion.2

Fselis painting depicts a beautiful young woman who has fainted after seeing an Johann Heinrich Fssli,
The Nightmare,
incubus a small demon that causes nightmares on her bed. Moreover, the The Freies Deutsches
nightmare itself is represented by a gray demonic mare that seems to have been Hochstift /
Frankfurter Goethe -
waiting backstage for just the right moment to appear and. . . The interpretation is
Museum, Frankfurt am
open for the viewer. Fseli only presents us with an instant, but in so doing he Main, Germany
embraces many uncontrollable, multiple, and simultaneous moments.
The current situation of curatorial work and its relationship to imaginary

constructions is in some way similar to what we see in The Nightmare. Artists,
spectators, and curators are dreaming the same dream at the same time and in
different places. For curators, there is no need and no possible way to get ahead the
artist and the audience even if curators, for the most part, play the role of the
demonic mare.

CURATORS STATEMENTS
An Exhibition
in Words
is curator at the
The following pages containing a contribution of Raimundas Malasauskas for An
Exhibition In Words curated by Jens Hoffmann are reprinted from Pulgar
Contemporary Art Centre
(CAC) in Vilnius, magazine # 12 published in 2002 in Caracas.
Lithuania.
Pulgar is an independent
magazine based in Pulgar #12
Caracas, Venezuela An Exhibition In Words
founded
by artist Luis Romero.
It appears regularly Bruce Hainley with Siobhan McDevitt
irregularly. It is funded
by Fundacin La Llama, Dorothea von Hantelmann
Caracas and the Prince Mary Jane Jacob
Claus Fonds,
The Hague,
Maria Lind
The Netherlands. Raimundas Malasauskas
Chus Martinez
Hans Ulrich Obrist with Philippe Parreno
Adriano Pedrosa
Virginia Prez-Rattn
Nancy Spector
Alexis Valliant
Curated by: Jens Hoffmann

CURATORS STATEMENTS
Alia Rayyan
Bidoun
Alia Rayyan
Born 1974 of
Palestinian/German origin,
Bidoun a new cultural magazine for the young generation in the Near East, North
Africa, Turkey, and Iran.
understanding, Bidoun can also describe someone who feels comfortable living
in many different worlds, but who does not belong to any particular one of them.
Alia Rayyan studied It defines the positive feeling of participating in many cultures, of being stateless,
international politics,
sociology, history of art,
A platform for young artists without subjected them to stereotypes. and in a sense, free.
and Arabic in Hamburg A platform that seeks to provide a network for the young generation of the region,
and London. Today, whether they live in Amman, Beirut, Rabat, Cairo, Istanbul, Berlin, London, or New The Near East. A combustion point, a center of conflict, unrest, and the current
her work and life oscillate
between Berlin, Beirut, York. Without specifying location, without pigeonholing. headscarf debate various phrases that light up like neon signs in your head
and Ramallah. She is as soon as the region is mentioned. Scholars, Near East experts, and
senior editor of Bidoun
and a free-lance journalist, A utopia? committees all deal with the misery the media is full of bloody headlines.
as well as a cultural Then, theres belly-dancing, tea-drinking, 1001 Nights Edward Saids debate
manager for several
literary and art programs.
The name. This relates to a political issue in the Arab region that may not be over Orientalism sends its regards the exotic Orient. A remote proximity
apparent to the non-Arab speaker. The word bidoun is loaded, not only in foreign but getting closer. And where is our place? We, the normal Joes, Arabs,
conventional linguistic usage, but also in a societal sense. Turks, Iranians, balancing on the path between here and there, between
tradition and the present. Ive encountered them in the streets of Beirut, Berlin,
One meaning of the word refers to the 180,000 people who, although they live in Ramallah, London and Cairo, kindred souls between the here and there.
the country of Kuwait, are officially non-citizens. They are, in many ways, stateless. Searching for something. A home defined by neither passports nor borders. The
They have no passport, no official status other than the designation of a people young generation from a region that has, it seems, been stamped by stereotypes
without citizenship: Bidouns. No matter how long or hard they work, they will never and misunderstandings. Those who find their home more with people than
belong to the country they consider home. Another example of statelessness in the within boundaries. Who no longer feel represented by the official
Near East, that of the Palestinians, adds yet more weight to the word. But in its representatives; who have found their means of expression in art. Bidouns.
simplest form, in both Arabic and Farsi, the word bidoun means without: without
a home, without a country, or without prejudice. The magazine. Bidoun we have not invented utopia out of a Near East
feeling, nor have we defined what this feeling is. Bidoun would like to offer a
That which may carry a negative connotation in conventional linguistic usage can forum for what we consider a vastly real utopia, in the truest sense of the Irish
be transformed into something positive when placed in a new context. In our Bishop Berkleys dictum: Esse est percipi exist and make your existence

noticed. We would like to create a space in which Arab, Iranian, and Turkish Hassan Khan have been celebrated as new lights on the art scene. And a certain
utopians can both appreciate each another and be given the opportunity to be amount of emancipation has been granted them. A certain amount. Having landed
appreciated. Regardless of whether they live in cities such as New York, London, on the global art market, they have been mutated into bestsellers, while satisfying
and Berlin, or such cities as Cairo, Beirut, and Istanbul. the publics interest in something different, the fascinatingly foreign that people
want to understand. But many of the exhibitions in the past few years that were
The idea. What could be more fitting than to create a medium that offers such regionally ascribed to the Near East have left a bad aftertaste. Too little has gone
people a platform? Those who live in the utopia of another Orient that is based on back to the countries referenced and too much exported thus creating a one
their work, their art. Why has such an initiative not taken shape much earlier? way street. The promise of finally arriving in the world has proved a bit threadbare.
There may, indeed, have been an arrival, but only into a display window.
On the one hand, within the countries themselves, one runs up against an attempt
to maintain the status quo. The idea of Bidoun connects people who are not We intend something else.
supposed to be connected: Contemporary art? You are going to be stirring up so
many problems. Why dont you write about positive things? Look outside; the sun The time has arrived for a new impulse an impulse from within an interior
is shining. Why dont you write about the sunshine? that is without boundaries, one that has not been reduced to regional ascriptions.
An impulse that invites the participation of all those who find meaning in a Bidouns
On the other hand, the focus of the artists themselves has always been on Europe attitude towards life.
and the United States. A complex construct of dependencies, acknowledgements,
and limited modes of expression. In ones own country, the interest in contemporary Being a Bidoun can be perceived as a liberation, if one allows it to occur. It frees
art does not seem all that great, so one pulls away. Delicate plants such as the us from rigidly defined attributions, opening up new spaces making room for
Townhousegallery in Cairo, which hopes to bring a new definition of art to society, movement and giving flight to a feeling of being both here and there and granting
are the exception. For the time being. permission for this. To feel at home within a non-place within your own utopia.
A without that in Farsi carries the added meaning, to know.
Art has followed the call of the international art market. In shows with names like
Contemporary Arab Representation, artists such as Akram Zaatari, Walid Raad and And not by chance.

ARTISTS PROJECTS
Alicia Framis
The Dreamkeeper
Alicia Framis Dreamkeeper is a work by Alicia Framis performed in Amsterdam, New York, and Alicia Framis,
(born in 1967, Dreamkeeper, 1998
Barcelona) is an artist Luxembourg as part of Manifesta 2. Framis visits people in the city who live alone Performance for lonely
based in Amsterdam to watch over their dreams at night. Wearing a special nightdress and bringing along inhabitants in the city.
and Barcelona. In 2003
she participated in the
a sleeping mat, she stays for twelve hours by their side, installing herself on the floor
Dutch Pavilion at the of the bedrooms of the people who have volunteered to participate. In the morning,
Venice Biennale. A she picks up her mat and leaves. Framis also takes a camera obscura with her to
selection of exhibitions:
Peiling 96, Stedelijk record twelve hours of communication without words. The record of dreams.
Museum Amsterdam;
Prix de Rome 1997,
the Netherlands;
Manifesta 2
Luxembourg (1998);
Loneliness in the City,
MACBA, Barcelona,
Kiasma Museum,
Helsinki, Migros
Museum, Zurich a.o.
(1999-2000); Remix
Buildings, Migros
Museum, Zurich
(2000); Squatters,
Fundacio Serralves,
Porto (2001); Sonsbeek
9: Locus/Focus,
Arnhem (2001); 2nd
Berlin Biennale, Berlin
(2001); Yokohama
Triennale (2001);
Anti_dog Annet Gelink
Gallery, Amsterdam,
Palais de Tokyo, Paris,
Reina Sofia, Madrid
(2002), Utopia Station,
Venice Biennale
(2003), Pattern
Language Contemporary
Art Museum
Philadelphia (2004),
Brave New World
Ileana Tounta
Contemporary Art
Centre, Athens (2004).
MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 3 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 3 385

384
Alicia Framis: When I
sleep with a stranger,
when I set up my bed
beside theirs, theres a
feeling of both trust and
terror. I wait in the
darkness for them to fall
asleep, and I can hear
them breathing and the
sheets rustling when
they turn over, and then
there comes a point
when it s as though
they are no longer there,
and then there s a
feeling of loss which I
imagine is very close to
that of death. I feel
alone, I write, and I sew
in their absence while I
wait for them to wake
up.
Alicia Framis, Petite

Morte Quotidienne,
1998
Photos made with
extreme exposure times
(single copies).
31 visits of the
Dreamkeeper, 31
different exposure times.
Photos made by the
Dreamkeeper during
7hrs. or the duration
of a dream.
MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 3 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 3 387

386
No. 3 Spring / Summer 2004

Published by:
Moderna galerija (Museum of Modern Art) Ljubljana
Ljubljana, Slovenia
and
International Foundation Manifesta
Amsterdam, The Netherlands The International Foundation Manifesta (IFM), with
offices in Amsterdam, The Netherlands organizes and
Editors: co-ordinates the New Network Program, which is a
Viktor Misiano multi-faceted resource and research program,
Igor Zabel encompassing the Manifesta Biennial, the Manifesta
Archives and a program of publications, discussions
Managing editor: and related activities, focusing on contemporary art
Marieke van Hal and its role in society. The public accessible archives
of Manifesta are located at the Manifesta at Home
English language editor: space in Amsterdam.
Rawley Grau
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MJ - Manifesta Journal

journal of contemporary curatorship

N3, Spring / Summer 2004

No. 3, Spring / Summer 2004

Maria Hlavajova Jochen Volz

Victor Mazin Peio Aguirre, Leire Vergara

Valery Podoroga WHW

Igor Zabel: A Conversation with Kathrin Rhomberg Una Szeemann

Viktor Misiano, Igor Zabel

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The fourth part of Now What? . . . included a series of conversations in which

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- Words and images, hardly discernable in the half-light? As in a dream, we cannot

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Igor Zabel: An Interview with Kathrin Rhomberg

Perhaps its the Destiny

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From Udo Kittelmann to Viktor Misiano

The Living Museum

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In the final analysis, this absence

Dreaming of secrets in this film brings

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Furthermore, if we use speculative means, authenticated through humanity or

Translated by: David Riff

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Dreams and Museum

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Always Dreamed of... times that includes their work. Looking at

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Hans Ulrich Obrist: A Conversation with Alejandro Jodorowsky

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