RÊVE. SURRÉALISME ET RÉVOLTE DE L'ESPRIT: PARIS

Humanity’s deep-rooted fascination for dreams experienced a turning point at the beginning of the 20th century after the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud (1900), a fundamental work of reference which definitively marked the scientific, philosophical, literary, poetic and artistic meaning of the word. In the aftermath of each of the subsequent world wars, artists and writers responded to Freud’s work on the unconscious and free association with increasing radicalism until the syntax of the visual and literary world was blown apart.

 

The Surrealists, who adopted the concept of dream as a leitmotiv around which many of the principles of the movement revolved, undertook a journey of no return into the oneiric world. The dream became a deep well from which to subjectively experience an alternate reality, an awakening, in which automatism, metamorphosis, imagination, impulse, freedom prevailed.

 

LH: This conversation is aimed at dwelling into the sogni/dreams project. In my view, your project with Bonami retakes the dream spirit and aims to represent the dreams of contemporary artists. It follows the framework of Trajectoire du Rêve by André Breton. Did Breton’s book have any influence in your project?

The project that Bonami and Obrist carried out during the Venice Biennale in 1999 starts with a letter sent to a hundred artists previously selected. In the letter they made a statement of intent: “It is very often the case that real ideas transmute into unrealizable dreams. We rarely think about our dreams as a necessary possibility for our present.” They went on to explain that Patrizia Sandretto had dreamt of a place where contemporary art could find fertile grounds, where ideas could become reality. Following this idea, Bonami and Obrist asked artists to send them one of their dreams in a format no longer than 300 words to print a booklet. It would include the dreams of some of the most prominent artists of the international scene. All those who attended the Biennale got a booklet, took a look at it and read it. Most of them kept it jealously.

HUO: We wanted to do a book which just looks at dreams. […] I have always liked this idea that one would ask artists to do something for a book. […] For some people it was more like a philosophical statement about what is a dream. For some people it is a formula.

LH: Taking into account the wide range of responses, do you think all argumentative lines were duly represented? I mean, was it what you expected?

HUO: It was an open invitation. We invited all these artists without knowing what they would answer and we got unexpected responses. I think it is very diverse. Some artists did conceptual artwork, some artists did a piece of literature, and other artists did a visual artwork.