Apr. 28, 2010 - Issue #758: May Week

Prevue

Dreaming on

One Night Series tackles the subconscious with informal discussion

Dreams and nightmares weave a link between two of the Art Gallery of Alberta's current exhibitions. In Goya: The Disasters of War, one particular etching "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters," reveals the hidden darkness in one man's subconscious, manifesting itself through wild animals surrounding his restless dozing body, which in turn inspired the second, Cardiff and Miller's sound-based A Murder of Crows, a spooky aural recollection of a trio of nightmares Cardiff experienced.

"There is that common thread about dreaming and nightmares, and how it maybe echoes the real world, and also how it could influence our perceptions of the real world," explains Ruth Burns, interpretive program manager at the AGA, who's expanding on the dream concept found in both, widening its examination beyond the exhibits with One Night of Dreaming, an open, informal discussion of the decided on idea.
The One Night Series was dreamt up last year by Burns and co, then focused on reality (based on the exhibit Real Life), though Dreaming marks the first one since the AGA's reopening (with more slated for future exhibits). With a number of experts and the audience, the assembled group gets to question and riff on the central idea in a casual, cafe-style discussion.

One of the speakers this time around, Dr Phyllis Marie Jensen, a health researcher on the cusp of completing her Phd in Jungian psychoanalysis, notes that dreams are one of the main tools of psychoanalysis, and when it comes to the dreams of artists, sometimes art itself can be an attempt to bring a dream into the physical realm.

"Sometimes you'll have a dream that is a painting," she says. "Then you try to do that painting. I often wonder about Leonardo Da Vinci: we look at his work and think, such a masterpiece. But how did he feel about his work? Did it really meet that idea in his head? He left a lot of things unfinished. It was as if he couldn't quite meet that picture in his head."

Still, though Jensen and other experts—including a psychiatrist, a novelist and an art historian—will be present and each given a specific chance to speak, and the discussion is anchored by the two exhibits, One Night of Dreaming is meant to be more open to input from its attendees than a panel presentaion with a quick Q & A tacked on.

"Whenever I write it in an email, it's 'panelists' in quotations because I really tried to get away from that format," says Burns. "It's more like the Philosopher's Café; each speaker is going to say something really briefly, and then it's really about the discussion that happens afterwards, and then engaging the audience." V

Thu, Apr 29 (7 pm)
One Night of Dreaming
Art Gallery of Alberta (2 Sir Winston Churchill Square), Free 

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