“The Man Who Waits and Sleeps While I Dream”
I became interested in exploring dreams as the primary material of all narrative structures — the first awkward stories we tell our own selves before our conscious selves can censor them. Drawing on observation techniques from a 19th century sleep disorders clinic the work poses a charged but unexpressed intimacy between a professional observer and her sleeping charge.
A large video projection of an impossibly deep drain is surrounded by images, text, and sound. These elements tumble together in random sequences of narrative structure, and become source material for a kind of “conversation.” A voice-over soundtrack that can be heard through headphones accompanies the video excerpt.
Physically, the images are projected in different scales on all sides of the room. Psychologically, the projections are contained within the voice over as the observer projects her own thoughts and neuroses onto the sleeping subject. These projections can also be seen as metaphors for the exchange between artist and viewer; between separation and longing; between lovers; between the conscious and sub-conscious within ourselves. The viewer walks between the elements of the work, putting together a particular understanding based on the randomness of his own physical placement in the room. –– One has to be somewhere to be at all involved and so we bring to any story our own personal and cultural assumptions, interpreting not only the language of the narrative, but images and sensations as well. -Joey Morgan
