Melanie Manchot at Petach Tikva Museum of Art

INSOMNIA

Opening: Saturday, 22.11.08 at 9:00 pm

Curator: Marie Shek

Melanie Manchot: The Dream Collector (Mexico City), 2008

The Dream Collector (Mexico City), 2008, five channel video installation, installation view (1), Passage De Retz, Paris

The Dream Collector (Mexico City), 2008, Still from video work (Ada Raquel awake), DVD, 43 min.

The Dream Collector (Mexico City), 2008, Still from video work (Ada raquel asleep), DVD, 43 min.

‘The Dream Collector’ is a new five channel video installation. The project originates from Manchot’s continued investigation into the nature and limits of portraiture and extends her particular approach towards a performative practice. The piece sets out to collect dreams from people, all ordinary citizens, who happen to temporarily and voluntarily sleep in public locations across the city – Mexico City.

The main element of ‘The Dream Collector’ consists of a video installation comprising of five monitors displaying synchronised video sequences of people sleeping in public and telling their dreams to camera.

To make ‘The Dream Collector’, Manchot filmed members of the public who are found asleep in a public location. All people are recorded for the entire duration of their sleep, from ten minutes to two hours. On waking these sleepers are asked whether they recollect any dreams from this very moment of sleeping. The work aims to chart the tension between the utter privacy of sleep and dream and the public nature of these shared social spaces. It also plays with the difficulty in communicating dream images and experiences and questions the status of these narratives and their translations.