Dreaming Against The Tide At The 59th Venice Biennale
Dog Chronicle #4
If you landed on Tarantula: Authors and Art for the very first time or are a new subscriber, the Dog Chronicle is a new editorial piece that looks at the world through the POV of a puppy and hints the theme of the month. What kind of a puppy are we talking about? A very curious chocolate toy or miniature poodle; he still isn’t sure of his real size. If a friend forwarded you this article about our hero, welcome; if you like it, share it or think of subscribing.
Having a dog is challenging for people who love to dream.
5:30 AM, the barking starts.
For some people this is just part of the ebb and flow of life. For someone who could easily sleep til noon, whose nights are full of intensive dream filled visual short movies, it is hard to get up. Nights, after all, are not a time to rest but to live life fully, colourfully, topsy-turvy, possibly even more honestly.
However, the speed with which I wake up, get out of bed, and put some clothes on to get the puppy down 4 floors in order for him to relieve himself in time should be an Olympic sport, rewarded by medals in form of extra hours of sleep. After all, the dog has needs, and the house needs to be clean and sheltered, so that it can be the safe haven where dreams are plotted.
Dreams are fragile. If interrupted, like in the case of Wolfie at 3 AM, when our hero reacts to a bird singing outside of the window welcoming spring, these magnificent images go up quickly in smoke. Nothing to hold onto, the symbols that can say so much about us as well as the state of the world that we live in, just vanish.
Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.”
- Carl Jung (Collected Works Volume 10, paragraph 317)
Wolfie also dreams. His legs twitch, his body shakes, and at times mimicking his 9 year old owner, he talks gibberish in sleep. What does a dog dream about? His mother? Chasing birds? Ending all wars? Sustainable living? The climate? Personifying a human in order to understand our kind better? Importantly, he does dream; and I stopped resisting the early mornings. Instead, after a few moments of grumpiness after I wake up, I give in to the flow.
I discovered that early morning daydreaming is the new trend. I didn’t even understand that I started a new morning practice until recently when I noticed that it is 6 AM again and I am opening my journal to write something after a cup of herbal tea. On other mornings, I read or just sit next to the window with a beautiful view and I feel lucky, I feel calm, I let my mind muse over things. Daydreaming doesn’t come easy anymore swamped in obligations, commitments and technology. However, after the early morning walk, the puppy naps again, the house is quiet, the world doesn’t start turning into a frenzy just yet; the window becomes my much needed sacred space. I let my eyes wander across the field, the water, the city landscape on the other side of the window. Once again, possibilities are endless.
59th Venice Biennale
In the world that spins at such an unprecedented speed, there is hardly any time to stop and find the inner space to dream, to let one’s imagination overflow and metamorphosize into beautiful creations.
Two months before the pandemic started, I attended a conference entitled Poetics Of Future Work held at the Electrolux building in Stockholm about the future of jobs, or jobs in the future, about bringing more creativity into the workplace, less hierarchy, and how will humans and machines relate to each other in new ways.
One of the top level executives at Electrolux shared with us that when the company attempted to bring more creativity into the workplace to dream up something new, the only thing that they could came up with was yet another washing machine. She admitted that allowing limitless daydreaming and creativity in such a structured environment seemed risky and something that they were afraid to fully embrace. That seems like the death of culture to me.
When Putin attacked Ukraine, most of us questioned his motive. Unfortunately, one can not come to any reasonable conclusion except that it is caused by megalomaniac thoughts and feelings associated with the Napoleon complex. Again, even though it is 2022, the fault of men, history, repeats itself. That seems like the death of imagination to me.
Therefore, it is maybe not a coincidence that for the very first time, female artists dominate this year’s Venice Biennale. If people still believe that the world can continue without including diverse stories, and stories of women who are still being controlled by the decisions of men, sorry, but at this point that just seems as the death of civilization to me.
Thus, this year’s Venice Biennale entitled “The Milk Of Dreams” is a welcome distraction, a needed disruption in our busy schedules. Lending the name from a book written and illustrated by Leonora Carrington, one of the women pioneers of surrealism, the new artistic director Cecilia Alemani spend many months plotting this year’s exhibition:
«This Exhibition is grounded in many conversations with artists which took place over the past months. The questions that kept emerging seem to capture this moment in history, when the very survival of the species is threatened, but also to sum up doubts that pervade the sciences, arts, and myths of our time. How is the definition of the human changing? What constitutes life, and what differentiates animals, plants, humans, and non-humans? What are our responsibilities towards the planet, other people, and the other organisms we live with? And what would life and the Earth look like without us? »
«The exhibition focuses on three themes in particular: the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses; the relationship between individuals and technologies; the connection between bodies and the Earth. »
- Cecilia Alemani (taken from the official Venice Biennale website)
Tide and time wait for no man. No matter if you like the art this year or what the reviews say, one thing is for sure: the Venice Biennale sent out a wake-up call: it is time to dive into our dreams and daydreams and start re-imagining a new and more inclusive, more magical world; and it feels more urgent than ever.
Share with us your dreams about the future:
Thanks for sharing Maja! Hope to see you soon!