Dreams have always been a powerful source of inspiration in art and culture. Many of history鈥檚 great artist and thinkers have questioned how our nighttime imaginings can offer a glimpse into our inner lives, or a doorway into alternate realities.聽聽Surrealism, a movement at its height between 1924 and 1945, was influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud and built upon the belief that creativity came from deep within a person鈥檚 subconscious. Figures like Max Ernst, Ren茅 Magritte and Salvador Dal铆 painted from within a dreamworld, creating works that transcended the literal world. Meanwhile, Man Ray wrote: 鈥淚n the morning when I wake up, if I have a dream, I draw it right away. Many of the drawings in聽Free hands聽are dream drawings.鈥 Self-taught artist Antonia Luxem follows in this long-standing tradition. Their multidisciplinary work spans film, installation, painting and writing, exploring different realities and transporting viewers to new mental spaces. Their moving-image piece,聽On Falling,聽was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2024. Their latest work, A Manual on Falling and Dreaming, considers the hypnagogic state 鈥 the threshold between wakefulness and sleep 鈥 to explore both the physical sensation of falling and a metaphorical disorientation that can open new ways of seeing the world. In conversation with聽Aesthetica, Luxem reflects on this new work and the need to embrace dreams as a way to more fully engage with our reality.聽
A: Much of your work focuses on your own dreams. Why do you choose to explore this theme?聽
AL:聽Dreams are an incredible fertile ground to explore how other realities could look and feel. I鈥檝e been fascinated by my own dreams since I was a child and I know how聽much聽there is to learn from them. They鈥檙e about processing memories, making sense of our lives and finding connections between unrelated experiences. Dreams are forces that move us beyond ourselves, they take us outside the confines of our body, life and opinions. Making art for me is a way of processing and understanding myself and the world. In that way, creating and dreaming are engaged in similar processes. For instance, in dreams we鈥檙e both the viewer and the environment, so the way we feel will influence our surroundings, and the way the landscape takes shape impacts us. The same is true in waking life, but most of the time we鈥檙e not in touch with that anymore. It鈥檚 incredibly gratifying jumping intentionally and consciously between realities, because you start to find all these new hacks for life that are borrowed from dreams 鈥 you can create magic. I鈥檓 currently writing another, more detailed text about this titled聽How to draw a map of the universe or walkabout on a Sunday.聽I鈥檓 interested in the power we can gain from being able to shift perceptions. We might not be able to change the world, but we can control the frame through which we view it.
A: How do you balance narrative and abstraction in building your dream worlds?
AL:聽I want to communicate a whole universe through my work. It鈥檚 more than a story or concept, it鈥檚 much closer to music. I learn a lot from music, because a song can never be fully understood and explained, it will always remain open and has the power to change the way you experience the day. That鈥檚 the kind of art I鈥檓 interested in making. I use metaphysical and phenomenological questions as starting points, and then I go on a journey and just see where it takes me. We can learn from dreams, or even daydreaming or during conversations, that narratives are far more open than one is made to believe. We should widen our horizons of perception and telling stories. We often catch ourselves saying things like 鈥淚 had a dream that didn鈥檛 make sense鈥 or 鈥渋t was absurd鈥, because they don鈥檛 fit into the logic of a narrative that we鈥檇 expect when awake, but they鈥檙e still stories. They might not comply with usual structures but make sense in another dimension. When we bring them into this reality, they sort of collapse into abstraction.聽
A: Could you explain what hypnagogia is, and how this state informs your practice?
AL:聽Hypnagogia is a聽transitional聽stage between wakefulness and sleep. It鈥檚 when you start getting drowsy. It鈥檚 very short-lived. I try to stay as lucid as possible during this phase, because you get to experience unusual sensations in a heightened way. It can sometimes be frightening as you feel an intense shift in your body, you lose yourself, some people have said it鈥檚 close to the sensation of dying. A very common experience is the feeling of falling, which is both a literal physical experience and a gateway to altered perceptions of time, mind and reality. You鈥檙e between spaces. When you physically fall, time can slow down, almost as though half a second extends into a minute and everything seems to stop. I see this pause in time as a revolutionary moment. The physical act of falling therefore becomes a way to experience time differently 鈥 slowed and expanded 鈥 and as a metaphor for transition, loss of control and transformation.
础:听A Manual on Falling and Dreaming聽is a continuation of your earlier film聽On Falling. Why did you decide to build upon this project?
AL:聽Sometimes we鈥檙e so focused on seeing one thing or being in one place and we forget to step back, zoom out and see the wider image. When you do, you might want to explore some other 鈥渋slands鈥, but you need to figure out how to get there. It鈥檚 something like snakes and ladders. I鈥檓 a tour guide who can take you between these different spaces.聽On Falling聽is one of the many 鈥渋slands鈥 that forms part of a larger universe that I鈥檝e been building over many years.聽A Manual on Falling and Dreaming聽is one of the ladders that I鈥檝e made as part of this. It鈥檒l take you to most islands, even those that don鈥檛 yet exist.聽On Falling聽began as an experiment to understand dream structures and how those might form a new creative and perceptual framework for making films in the future. After conducting an experiment, you need time to look back at the results and reflect on the outcome.聽A Manual on Falling and Dreaming聽explores this journey and realises that falling reveals a fusion between physical and conceptual worlds, where time can be hacked and our experience of self and surroundings are transformed. It becomes a gateway to the structure of my next film, which will seek to appropriate dream structures in order to re-create a unique metaphysical experience. My interest lies in creating new forms of filmmaking and ways of watching.
A: You speak of ambiguity as an 鈥渆ndangered resource.” How do you nurture this in your process?
AL:聽Ambiguity isn鈥檛 vague, it鈥檚 precise and intentional. My work emphasises the importance of uncertainty 鈥 as a spiritual, metaphysical resource depleted in modern life 鈥 and dreams as vehicles to recover it, allowing for empathy, multiple perspectives and a shift in how we relate to reality and time. By observing and embodying dream structures we can cultivate a deeper, longer-term vision for life and open creative possibilities and new ways of being in the world 鈥 and thereby also create new worlds.
A: What鈥s next? Anything we can look forward to?
AL:聽I鈥檝e been building a Dream Incubation聽Chamber,聽a sensorial聽and touring space built with collaborators by hacking into and appropriating dreams structurally, phenomenologically and in the way they represent time. Through it, I鈥檓 trying to facilitate people traveling to unexplored spaces within themselves. It鈥檚 a place of radical attention, possibilities and healing. I鈥檓 also writing my next film, CHIMERAS, that will take place within a variant of this chamber. It鈥檚 a darkly comedic exploration of consciousness, that鈥檒l take you on a journey that collapses into absurdity. A hacker god summons a group to dream parliament, a surreal chamber where sleep cycles dictate the rhythm of their debate. As they drift through NREM and REM-like states, their interactions grow increasingly disjointed and their world destabilises into near-collapse.
Words: Emma Jacob &
Image Credits:
All images courtesy of Antonia Luxem.
