“To sleep, perchance to dream” – the insomniac’s longing. Scientists & artists have been puzzling out the mystery of sleep for at least as long as there have been sheep to count. This deep dive in the New Yorker – “The Work We Do While We Sleep” – gets into recent developments in research on sleep. An expert’s guide to napping in the Guardian offers recommendations on how to optimize rest. Siobhan Phillips digs into “Sleep as Resistance” for Poetry Foundation, close reading the works of major and minor writers. Venetia Welby laments “The Art of Lost Sleep” in London Magazine. Tilda Swinton’s “The Maybe” – a performance in which the actress slept in a glass vitrine (in London’s Serpentine Gallery in 1995, and at MoMA in New York in 2013) – brought a fairy tale quality in a modern context.
Boris Charmatz plays in this philosophically, poetically rich space between awake and asleep in his solo work. Learn more.
Recommended readings to get you in gear for the show.
Chloe Aridjis, Dialogue with a Somnambulist: Stories, Essays & a Portrait Gallery. Catapult, 2023.
Ana Janevski, editor, Boris Charmatz: Modern Dance. The Museum of Modern Art, 2017.
Jean Ma, At the Edges of Sleep: Moving Images and Somnolent Spectators. University of California Press, 2022.
“I am always on the lookout for what we are doing and how we could change things.”
“I am always on the lookout for what we are doing and how we could change things.”
“I am sure that the doorway into dance is sometimes too narrow.”
“At the end of the day, it is all about feeling free and being free, which is the point of art.”
Black people are generally pictured as doing anything but relaxing—as being attacked, or agitating, or performing. The Black Rest Project aims to widen the lens.