Dream Minds
July 22, 2012 - July 23, 2013
Dream Minds was a year long public engagement project for the City of Chicago where I interviewed one Chicago resident every week for a year. Each participant received a Dream Mind paintng at the interview and later a poem. This project evolved into City Alive with Dreams where I worked with an eight person choir to compose a selection of the poems to music. This became a choral performance performed at Chicago Cultural Center and Hyde Park Arts Center and then toured the city as an interactive public performance inspired by Ancient Greek Dream Temples.
Public VS Private, 6018North
Dream Minds was incorporated into an exhibition at 6018North curated by Tricia Van Eck from October 5 through October 22, 2012. In this month long exhibition I treated it like a residency interviewing the public, signing up participants and performing poetry for people who stopped by. Every Monday night Dream Minds participants were invited to read their poems I wrote for them on the side walk. Some translated them into different languages, some rearranged the words generating different performances. People connected through poetry.
I interviewed one person every Monday about a sleep dream from 2012 to 2013. I wrote a poem based on their sleep dream that the participant was given. Each participant received a painting which is inspired by queen of luxuria’s costume (please see below). This project has been created to investigate the subconscious realm and explore the connections between our subconscious reality and our reality. This project documents the fears, anxieties and desires of a diverse population of Chicago residents. This project started on July 23rd 2012 and formally opened at the Red Rover Series on July 28th, 2012 at Outer Space Studios. I put myself in different public situations to sign up random members of the public.
Dream Mind Painting
Each Dream Mind participant received a painting as a gift at the interview. Each person received their poem and all poems went through a editing process at the Ragdale residency in the Spring 2014. These series of paintings were inspired by the negative patterns of the queen of luxuria costume
For Children Everywhere
Dream Minds Poem for Brooks Hall
The Dream Mind participants actively engaged in the project throughout the year. In this project three Dream Mind participants wrote their poems on the sidewalk outside Chicago Cultural Center and then came inside and performed them as part of a public presentation of the work.
The oscillation between the internal and the external - placing these personal stories in poetry on the sidewalk for random members of the public to read was a really special experience.