Dream Exchange

Celebrating the centenary of André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism, the course offers a transcultural experience that crosses geographical and chronological boundaries to explore sleep, dreams, and nightmares in the plastic arts, performance, and new media. Dream Exchange leads us into the multiple “compartments of the unconscious” studying objects from a wide range of cultures around the globe, alongside Western art from various periods. Works by contemporary artists draw on surrealism’s heterodoxy, transgressive impulse, and strategies of defamiliarization to create immersive spaces that induce reverie and transcendence. Works of scholars on dreams will serve to understand and contextualize the art we will be exploring.

Classes will take place at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.