GTBT Start Introduction Itinary Outro
Chiara Fumai had created an intimate space by putting the mobile walls of the project room more than halfway in the room. The audience was asked to come to the space, lie on the floor, close their eyes and follow the flow of a talk. Here the artist conjured up details of an artwork by Gino De Dominicis (Auronia D.D. uscita dal parallelepipedo di vetro, volteggia invisibile nella bacheca / Auronia D.D. once out of the glass box, floats invisible in the cabinet, 1997), re-enacted a spoken word performance by Vito Acconci (Antarctica of the Mind, 2004), and referred to an exhibit that was yet to happen in the project room. In advance she asked the audience to literally project themselves into the plastic realities which she would describe –without mentioning that they belonged to artworks and an exhibition– but also to imagine that they then should attempt to get out of their confining borders. Upon this the artist invited the audience to join her during a performance at 3:00 am the next day, in a state of lucid dream.
Was this work an indirect statement about the trip on the train and the stay at the island? The artist saw her performance as a sketch, a try-out, an attempt to show an essence of her experience, a residue that had stayed with her. Looking back at the experience, the artist suggested that maybe the best way to put it is that all of us had been projected into a realm of magic.
On the experience of her nightly performance she provided the following report:
The Mediumnistic Mystery Tour was developed through various performative acts at the Dutch Art Institute that took place in the Rapid Eye Movement sleep phase of the spectators in the night of June 16 (from 3.00 am to 6.00 am).
Before going to sleep the spectators followed a workshop of an hour in the Project Room. The workshop was composed by short lectures on dreamfaring, lucid dreaming, dream recalling and mental visualization exercises based on Gino De Dominicis and Vito Acconci's works.
Only two (sensitive) members among the participants were able to provide the day after a written report of the acts they attended.
No pictures were allowed.' *