Installation View

Interview Video

2012

 I invited four volunteers to spend the night in Art League's main gallery space. Two are artists, one is an art collector, and another is a museum director. Before they slept, I triggered their dreams by having them watch the time-traveling sci-fi film Donnie Darko and listen to music by Sun Ra and the groups Parliament and Funkadelic. I recorded them sleeping. The next day, a psychologist interviewed them, asking what they dreamed or thought about while sleeping overnight in a creative environment, and inquired about their dreams related to certain objects considered Black tropes and stereotypes.



Transitioning through ideas of multiverse exploration, time travel, and imagination, Donnett references Carl Jung’s Active Imagination theory and St. Elizabeth Hospital study, along with African American interpretations of predictive and divinatory dreams as a starting point to question the limits and/or encouragement of black imagination.

An art class was organized as part of the programming, allowing volunteers to create art that references their dreams, experiences, and environment. I had many questions that led to this project.