
What land is the land of dreams?*
It is the place where logic refuses to walk, the land untouched by consciousness.
I create a swampy environment of immersion, in which the viewer is submerged in the land of my dreams.
A weaving of dreams with real events builds my dreamscapes on the canvas, creating an inseparable estrangement.
I am interested in the mechanism of dreams to connect with the unconscious. I negotiate the labyrinth of dreams, all those things that remain secret, in the shadow, that exist on the threshold, as raw material from reality to approach the real.
Dreams are the most personal unfamiliar place where I connect through the "darkroom" with the distant, redefining reality.
Walter Benjamin, why did I spend most of my life in the darkroom of the conscious, printing black-and-white images, and in the darkroom of the unconscious?
-Because the most important images—those that appeared in the darkroom of the lived moment—are precisely the ones we come to see.**
I choose analog film and craft work, not out of nostalgia, but because I consider them equally relevant as a counterbalance. I create sculptures, even installations, with materials from the swamp.
I make swampy woolen carpets using the Tufting technique, a soft body for the viewer to enter the work, to sink as they would sink into a swamp.
There is a value in the swamp's "Eco-logic" that is not recognized by the traditional Western view. Nature is a source of inspiration; even ugly nature is inspiration. The marginal, the chaotic, the corrupted, the dirty is better than order and purity. The "swamp"*** is a space for transformation, an attempt to reconcile with our chaotic swampy nature, with its complexity and contradictions.
André Breton, be sure that Surrealism did nothing better than to connect with a conductive wire the highly divided worlds of waking and sleeping, of external and internal reality, of logic and madness...****
Antouanetta Angelidi, thank you for confirming that reality is made of dreams that life steals, and I must steal from life to see them.
Unconscious, I allow you to haunt reality, since you are stronger than the conscious!
I was four years old when I had the same dream every time I slept on the side facing the wall.
I believed that dreams lived inside the walls.
Later I understood that they may be the most significant events in life before death, and death perhaps the monumental dream.
I will be equally concerned with death as I am with dreams.
When I return to the Abyss of the five senses...*****
s
i
n
k
i
n
g
θ in θ
θ worlds θ
θ with white wing
bugs θ
θ that see me from the opposite
house θ
θ they thought Θ
θ I was the lady of this
house θ
θ because I sat down playing
the piano θ
θ with dead θ
θ that have θ
θ red tattoo flowers θ
all over their bodies With
excessive efforts θ
θ
θ
θ to manage to escape
θ
θ to fly over swamps with
excrement θ
with people who want to
sacrifice me with
θ cars speeding in front of me with
erect penises on their windshields θ
with pink angelic sponges
with
death
θ
θ knocking on our
kitchen door θ
θ and I told you to be
silent θ
θ !
θ
I was silent
but you
θ kept opening and closing the curtains
θ
θ idiots
θ
θ ! θ
with an
θ end
θ
θ θ
!
I open my eyes and write – in a somewhat tilted posture – this is how the dream unfolds in the mnemonic.
The return to the lost land of dreams is accompanied by a cry, a lament
for life? The dream? Death?
André Breton, yes, the dream also engage in solving the fundamental problems of life ! ******
*The Land of Dreams, William Blake, published by Macmillan, New York, 1928
**Dreams, Walter Benjamin, translated by L. Anagnostou, Alexandria Editions, 2023, p. 120
***Swamp Protocol from Most Dismal Swamp:
https://files.cargocollective.com/c1922216/SWAMPPROTOCOLPUBLICATION.pdf
****The Communicating Vessels, André Breton, translated by L. Pallantios, Aigokeros Editions, 2022, p. 101
*****The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake, translated by Ch. Vlaviannos, Nefeli Editions, 1997, p. 49
******Manifestos of Surrealism, André Breton, translated by E. Moschona, Dodoni Editions, 1983, p. 16