At a time of collective suffering and anxious uncertainty about the future, a new culture of dreaming may be emerging.
For many people, an unexpected consequence of the pandemic has been a surge of dreams and nightmares. The combination of a frightening external threat (the COVID-19 virus) and being quarantined at home for long periods of time has led to more dream recall and more awareness of dreaming in general. It has also stirred interest in sharing these dreams with other people, and hearing what they have been dreaming.
It seems we are witnessing the organic development of new ways of talking about dreams, understanding their value, and recognizing their significance for collective concerns and social realities.
The weirdest thing about this is that it is not weird at all. Sharing dreams with other people is a natural, normal practice in most non-Western cultures around the world and through history. Dream-sharing occurs most often among family and friends, and can also take place as part of religious rituals, healing ceremonies, and spiritual guidance. And in almost all these cultures, dreams are recognized as reflecting both personal and collective realities.
Three websites offer exciting prospective visions of dreaming as a dynamic element of creativity across various domains. These are not the only forward-looking websites on dreaming (nor do I endorse everything they do and say), but they vividly illustrate the potentials for further creative exploration of the dreaming/art/culture nexus.
The Museum of Dreams
Created and edited by Sharon Sliwinski, Professor of Information and Media Studies at Western University in Canada, the Museum of Dreams provides a venue for scholars, artists, and psychoanalytic therapists to collaborate on dream-centered projects. Sliwinski’s 2017 book Dreaming in Dark Times is one of the best works about dreaming in recent years, and the Museum expands on her book’s thesis that dreams can be powerful agents of new political awareness and cultural transformation. The Museum’s mission is stated in these terms:
“The Museum of Dreams is a hub for exploring the social and political significance of dream-life. We collect and creatively work with dreams from the historical record and provide a platform for collaborative storytelling projects… Dreams are a springboard for articulating the things we have trouble expressing, the stories we struggle to voice—to ourselves and to each other.”
Among the many highlights in the collection, Melissa Adler’s piece, “Do Monsters Dream?” explores Jorge Luis Borges’ story “The House of Asterion,” which centers on a strange dream of the Minotaur of ancient Greek legend. From the mysterious depths of this literary dream of a mythic figure, Adler draws out a host of fascinating insights about literature, politics, and psychology. The text is interwoven with beautiful images and dynamic graphics.
Another impressive work is “Dream of A Keen,” by Lana Lin. A poignant meditation on a strangely neologizing dream she experienced prior to her diagnosis with breast cancer, the piece includes photos, video, music, and an essay about the languages of mourning.
Several exhibits in the collection present dreams from interesting characters in history, illuminating the dreams in their psychological and cultural contexts. These figures include Nelson Mandela, Helene Cixous, Henry James, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno. The exhibits also include works exploring the dreams of people often overlooked by mainstream society, historically and in present times—immigrants, war veterans, people of color, children.
Dreampire
Dreampire provides an enchanting, kaleidoscopic gallery of first-person dream reports. Founded and managed by the director and writer Erika Kapronczai, the site offers a wild digital bazaar of dreams and dreamers. Ranging in length from a few seconds to several minutes, each video gives a brief but thought-provoking glimpse into the imaginal reality of another human being. Because we can see the dreamers, hear their voices, and watch their expressions and gestures as they talk, the dreams come alive in a way they never could as written texts only.
The audiovisual format allows for an extremely wide range of people to participate in the dream-sharing process, a wider range than found in most academic studies. Each video has several hashtags for specific items of content that can be searched across the site. Visitors can browse the videos according to the newest releases, the most viewed, or staff picks. It’s surprisingly easy to get lost down multiple rabbit holes!
The site aspires to be a combination of Facebook and Youtube, which may or may not be a good model for the future of dream-sharing, but which does highlight the powerful convergence of new technologies and their potential to dramatically expand the range of people who can share their dream-inspired creativity with others.
Nori Muster’s Dream Studies Page
A more personal, small-scale approach to dream-sharing can be found on the Dream Studies page managed by Nori Muster. Muster is a journalist and writer with a background in art therapy. Her personal website includes the Surrealist.org domain, where she maintains a valuable page on dream studies. The focus is her collection of hundreds of personal dreams going back her time as a member of a violent, secretive religious group in the 1980’s. She wrote about these experiences in a 1996 memoir Betrayal of the Spirit, and her dreams reflect what she endured during those years in harrowing detail. I have been fortunate to know Muster for several years and work with her on some of these projects.
The site also includes a selection of contemporaneous sketches that Muster made of images from her dreams. This artistic dimension in her dream journaling practice suggests that dream researchers will benefit from expanding their methodological horizons to recognize and appreciate the potential insights from expressive sources other than written texts.
