The Night, From Insomnia to a Waking Dream: A Spacetime for Subversion?

Sleep at night, live during the day: this alternation provides rhythm to most human existences. But, as Anabelle Lacroix’s “Freedom of Sleep” project acknowledges, the porosities that exist between day and night, between waking and sleeping, are multiple and cultural. In a time where sleep time is now counted more than ever, eaten away by the imperative of productivity, by the growing anxiety of our exhausted societies and by the increasing absence of darkness, a need has emerged: how to inhabit the night? And what spaces of subversion, real or imagined, remain open to us? Turning day into night, over-consuming every second, drives us, paradoxically, to insomnia – an inability to let go. If sleep is to become a right, living at night could constitute an alternative, a manner of reappropriating our fatigue to reconsider our standardized rhythms. This Station 19, entitled “La nuit. De l'insomnie au rêve éveillé: un espace-temps de subversion?” (“The Night, From Insomnia to waking dream: a space-time of subversion?”) is thus concerned with the cacophonous desynchronization of bodies and environments. It invites both to decentering – to the observation of the multiplicity of sleep/waking rhythms that constitute our cosmomorphical world – and to recentering – to the ability to listen attentively to the internal clock that is unique to each one of us, investing insomnia and the spacetime of the night as spaces of struggle that are as real and political as they are personal, unproductive and suboptimal. The night, a fertile terrain from which different states of consciousness emerge, becomes the place that favors the cohabitation of a plurality of beings. In the filmic universe of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose work is presented at the IAC from June to October 2021, bodies, elements and temporalities are transformed and merged, sheltered from the frontiers and hierarchies induced by daylight. The stark limit gives way to continuity and collective resonance. Obscurity is charged with a force that is dreamlike, political and metaphorical; darkness transforms our experience of the world and in this way allows us to imagine and redefine the conditions of our co-existence.

 

 


Works under study

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Méryll Ampe, One Night, 2021

 

 

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Félicia Atkinson, A Forest Petrifies, 2021

 

 

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Black Power Naps, Black Power Naps Maquette, 2021

 

 

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Johanna Rocard, Batailles Nocturnes, 2021

 

 

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Zoe Scoglio, Internal (Nocturnal) Dialogues, 2021

 

 

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Tom Smith & Jon Watts, Waking Life: The Dreamwork Model, 2020

 

 

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Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Haiku, 2009

 

 

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Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Fireworks (Archives), 2014

 

 

 

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Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Blue, 2018

 

 

Speakers

Érik Bordeleau
Puissances de l'implicite
Philosopher, research fellow at the Stockholm School of Economics and “fugitive” planner for the Sphère

Guy Bordin
Regards sur la nuit, le sommeil et le rêve chez les Inuit du haut Arctique canadien
Ethnologist, Associate Member of the Study and Research Centre on World Literature and Oralities (INALCO)

Arianna Cecconi
Nuits d'ici, nuits d'ailleurs: quand les rêves et le sommeil dévoilent des territoires
Anthropologist, research fellow at the Centre Norbert Elias, EHESS, and Associate professor in Social Sciences at the Ecole nationale supérieure d’Architecture (ENSAM) de Marseille. Since 2014, researcher as part of the project: « Recherche-Action Interdisciplinaire sur la Transmission du Sommeil de la mère à son enfant » (“Trans- disciplinary Research-Action on the transmission of sleeping habits from Mother to Child”) in collaboration with the “Centre du Sommeil” of the Hôpital de la Timone in Marseille

Florian Gaité
Danser, s’épuiser, résister : club techno et fatigue souveraine
Philosopher, teacher at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, research fellow at the ACTE Institute and art critic

Claude Gronfier
Pourquoi la synchronisation entre l'heure interne/biologique et l'heure externe/sociétale est de plus en plus difficile ? Un voyage en chronobiologie
Researcher at the Inserm, circadian neurobiologist and non-visual photo-biologist, Team Waking – Neurocampus, Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon (CRNL), Centre Hospitalier Le Vinatier

Olivier Hamant
Lumière sur les plantes
Biologist, research Director at the Laboratory for the reproduction of Plants (INRAE) and Director of Michel Serres Institut

Cyrille Noirjean
Se réveiller en psychanalyse
Psychoanalyst (member of the International Lacanian Association), director of URDLA

Julien Discrit
Moderator
Artist

Alexandra Goullier Lhomme
Moderator
In charge of researches for Brain Space Laboratory 

Works under study

Félicia AtkinsonA Forest Petrifies, 2021
→ Audio link

Black Power NapsBlack Power Naps Maquette, 2021

Johanna RocardBatailles Nocturnes, 2021
→ See the performance

Zoe Scoglio, Internal (Nocturnal) Dialogues, 2021
→ Video link

Tom Smith & Jon WattsWaking Life: The Dreamwork Model, 2020
→ Video link

Apichatpong WeerasethakulHaiku,
2009 ; Fireworks (Archives), 2014 ; Blue, 2018

Study day

Curated by Anabelle Lacroix and Stéphanie Raimondi, with the collaboration of Alexandra Goullier Lhomme

Saturday, May 15, 2021
on line - via Zoom

To receive the specific documentation for this station, register here

Program of Station 19
→ download the program of Station 16  (french version)

Participants

Nathalie Ergino
Director of the Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes

Jérôme Grivel
Artist

Ann Veronica Janssens
Artist, teacher at the School of Fine Arts, Paris

Flora Katz
Art critic, independent curator and doctoral student affiliated with the Institut ACTE (Art, Creation, Theories and Aesthetics - CNRS/Université Paris 1)

Sandra Lorenzi
Artist

Théo Massoulier
Artist

Cyrille Noirjean
Director of l’URDLA (International center estampe & book), psychoanalyst (member of the International Lacanian Association)

Stéphanie Raimondi
Artist

Vahan Soghomonian
Artist

Floryan Varennes
Artist

Mengzhi Zheng
Artist