volume of a sleep — 2022
Date: Octombrie 2022
A performative installation by Oana Mureșan (choreographer & performer), Vlaicu Golcea (music & sound design), Maria Ghement (architect), Justin Baroncea (architect), Mihai Stancu (neuroscientist), Alexandru Andrei (sound technician supervisor), Atelier SET (set design production), Simona Abagiu (producer), Alex Radu (curator).
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Sleep has its own life. We spend about a third of our lives asleep, yet, paradoxically, our sleeping life doesn’t seem to belong to us. We do not remember most of it, though our brain doesn’t sleep while sleeping. The banality of sleep contrasts with its enigmatic intelligibility.
Competing discourses from neuroscience, biology, psychology, social economy or simply public imagination brought this typically private ritual into the public space. Since the 70s we started to better understand the architecture of sleep and its cognitive functions.
The performative installation Volume of a Sleep references the complexities of the contemporary knowledge about sleep, through a porous space at the edge of dream and reality. Staging sleep means an audio-visual-tactile immersion into a private and unconscious space, with fragile boundaries, while creating a dialogue between physical presence, a hypnotic sensorium, and the panacea of dreams.
Constantly mediated by a membrane, the performer reclaims through soporific movements sleep’s temporal, restorative, and nostalgic dispositions, in virtue of a ritual that has been repeating itself for millions of years, in which we submit to an unchanging biological cycle.
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/SAC @ Malmaison, Bucharest is a context-space of co-productions, collaborative and transdisciplinary research and practices in the visual, performing and scenic arts.
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A cultural project co-financed by The National Administration of Cultural Fund (AFCN). The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Administration of Cultural Fund. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.