The Im_flieger Schlaflabor is a long-term artistic research project in which artists from various disciplines explore the phenomena of sleep and dreaming and investigate the special characteristics and inspirations of specific locations in their work. Marta Forsberg, Anne Glassner, Anita Kaya, and Agnes Schneidewind explore sleep from different perspectives as a moment in which we (re)experience the distant and recent past, (un)known worlds, memories, dreams, desires, and – above all – rest. In the sixth and final sleep laboratory, they (re)activate materials and practices from their collaboration and immerse themselves in the performative laboratory as a dream state itself. In their annual meetings, the artists sleepwalked with horses, in Ljubljana and old farms, family homes and sanatoriums, slept collectively and with stones, encountered each other and other beings, told of their (bad) dreams and repetitions of repetitions. New and returning guests join the laboratory: Doroteya Petrova has been embroidering Anne’s grandmother’s bedspread for three years, Marietta Kesting contextualizes the work in dream and sleep states and the various attempts to store and collectivize them, Lisa Spalt reads the continuation of a stranger’s dream.
During sleep, the body escapes social norms and obligations and transforms into an unproductive, vulnerable, irrational body. The sleeping body is present and absent at the same time, it is individual and collective, wild and gentle. Sleep is silent resistance against overproductivity and efficiency and, as such, must be defended against increasing optimization in the sense of neoliberal doctrines.
This collaboration is being realized within the framework of Im_flieger In_FORSCHUNG, which focuses on performative perspectives in artistic collaboration between different disciplines and promotes exchange between artists and theorists.
Sleep Laboratory 1: HYPN- 21:35 – 04:41, A meeting between waking and sleeping, Im Flieger, Wien 2019
Eine Zusammenkunft zwischen Wachsein und Schlafen
https://www.imflieger.net/hypn-2135-0441/
Sleep Laboratory 2: Snoring peackocks in humming hammocks in Waldviertel, 2020
https://www.imflieger.net/schlaflabor-2-snoring-peacocks-in-humming-hammocks/
Sleep Laboratory 3: Stones sleeping next to honesty at Zaunreiter Akademie, 2022
https://www.imflieger.net/sleep-laboratory-3-stones-sleeping-next-to-honesty/?lang=en
Sleep Laboratory 4: Slovenia, Dum Project space, titles to arrive in another slow blue, 2023
https://www.imflieger.net/titles-to-arrive-in-another-slow-blue-sleep-laboratory-4/?lang=en
Sleep Laboratory 5:
https://www.imflieger.net/what-are-you-doing-in-my-dream-im_flieger-schlaflabor-2024/?lang=en
Sleep Laboratory 6:
https://www.imflieger.net/until-the-morning-im_flieger-schlaflabor-2025/?lang=en