A long and winded voyage from the late 90'ties.
Fantastic because the dream incorporates all main fantastic genres:
a fantazy intro shifting to horror, continues as sf, ends in anti-surrealism...
I walk around in a room in a house, windows open,
outside I see the city including its many corresponding canals.
But for some less declared reason I'm quite mad at something.
I'm also all alone in the house. I kick the chair as it gets in my way.
A table too. A jar in the corner gets the same treat. It only rolls around,
nothing happens to it, yet I hear a sound. From within the jar?
"Wait.." something groans, as I lift the jar to investigate:
I discover a face at the bottom! Looking back at me, quite angrily.
"Just wait. You'll get that back!" it says, not in a good mood, "In 16 years! 16 years!".
Before I can think of any response, the set changes completely and years pass...
The word for world is grey. All colours shades of grey, but mostly darker hues.
I'm standing alone on a beach, and it's definitely not summertime.
More like eternal autumn. November. Heavy clouds hanging silently above,
at ground a slight fog makes everything distant into a silhouet.
Murky subdued light and the air feels damp. Not a wind, not a sound.
I spot something lying in the sand ahead, and walks closer.
Something buried, about 2 meters long less than 1 meter wide.
Looks familiar. What, or who? Is it a grave? Is it me? I remember
all the years having passed, and cannot dismiss the thougth. Who lies here?
Preoccupied like this I happen to wander off the beach-area and into an other timezone.
Unexpected, the sky begins to brigthen, and the eternal autumn seems now behind me.
Like a spring evening, in the countryside, probably close to a beach.
I notice a small city ahead and walks closer. I pass a large garbage-container,
notice it's stuffed with piles of old paper-books. All obsolete, discarded.
I open one of them and it is 16 years old. Printed the year I fell asleep.
Everything in walking distance, I soon reach the city, an open house stands out,
many ligths and people inside, open doors. An cultural event of some kind?
Pictures hanging in spotlight on the walls, in front of each a corresponding object displayed.
I can't see details yet, but it looks like multi-art of a kind. I enter the building,
turn round a corner, about to see my first exibition in the 21'st century. I see...
Commercials on the walls claiming to be our future visions,
consumergoods displayed as modern sculptures.
The text on the piedestal is a price. The whole show isn't a joke,
this is art in the future. Or rather, where art ends.
(Warhole might have dreamt of this, but I'm not quite sure...)
After these horrors of anti-art the dream seems to dissolve.
Or maybe the real drama continues elsewhere, perhaps
I have turned the wrong corner or missed a clue? I wander aimlessly
around in different rooms, stop, suddenly recognize a young boy,
watching me silently from across the room, my self as child,
then Jules Verne absentmindedly walks by,
looking for something...
Mads Dam, 2005
News
Introduction
Boat of everything. Mircea Eliades dream
Descartes 3 dreams. November 10, 1619
Dr Jekyll and mr Hyde. Robert Louis Stevenson
Fantastic voyage. A long and twisted tale
Keules chemical dream. A vision of benzenes structure
Lincolns premonition. Who is dead in the White House?
Mary Shelleys dream. First vision of Frankenstein
Parallel world. Traffic accident on the hyperway
Swedish library. The unknown book
Vision without words. An experiment with Burroughs
Whitmans trance. My favourite trees
A3 Poster. Get all dreams on print
Quotes
Links
"Nightmare" (1781) by Henry Fuseli
"Dream" (1910 by Henri Rousseau, french post-impressionist