The Place of Dreams

What if I created a miniature world, a meadow : the sound of crickets: to create a dream like place inside of a place: untouched, perfect, distorted- like dreams in light boxes.

At Night

Late at night i'm plagued with dreams where my body is immobile. I'll wake between dreams to discover it is another dream i have woken into. I fear this entrapment: where i fight between morphed walls and sinking beds. I discover my own body heavy- my eyes like slits are unable to open, my voice dry and cracked. I'll flee to the rooms of others; to look down on their peaceful sleeping bodies.

Where is this place of dreams: Where touch and smell are real?

Hybridity

If i look at Hybridity in the terms of symbolic order, A hybrid would fall under the order of the small other.

I guess before I use this term I should explain.

Jacques Lacan, a Psychoanalytic theorist, discussed the symbolic order the "Big Other".
it is an order that categorizes the world around us, so that it may be more easily understood.
He also discusses the 'Small Other'- "small particles of dust that gives body to the lack in the Big Other" (Kiendl 72). The Small Other embodies a glitch or defect: this defect is labeled as petit objet a something that is the cause of desire. It can only be perceived by a gaze distorted by desire. Slavoj Žižek, also a theorist, furthered on the concept of petit objet a: stating it is the thing which fantasy is projected upon.

The Hybrid is something that is not understood. It falls under the adjectives of defective and monstrous. It is something that cannot be easily understood and therefor falls under that category of petit objet a. The hybrid lives in the world of fantasy and myth. It is understood as abnormal and therefor is something to be feared.

If Hybrids live with myths and fantasy then they would also belong with Fables.

Fables, Myths and Stories

Fables house the petit abjet a, utilizing them as antagonist or villain: the exampled vice that the narrative tries to illustrate (as bad). Fables are ethical, persuasive- in which Protagonist walks among a personified world, intersecting these 'villains' in order to display the grand designs of "punishment and reward...stag(ing the) perennial cycles of greed and compassion" (Allen 14). A lesson is attended from this, thus the purpose of the fable.

Erik Edson is a multi-disciplinary artist that uses landscape as metaphor to reflect humanity's interaction with the natural world. Human abasement to nature is displayed through his manipulation of animal imagery. His work incorporates childhood toys and figures from the world of fairy tales. In his exhibition Fable, Edson creates a carnivalesque environment that reflects the relationship between human and animal. "He attempts to bring viewers to the brink of disorientation" (14) through his slapstick wit and quality of sleeplessness. Edson's nature is a distant world where taxidermist bears stand frozen in chintz upholstery fabric, beady eyes black and vacant: his life-sized teddy-bear.

Sleeping Giants

The Work of Max Streicher thrives through displacement. Inflatable white objects hang listless and large, they loom over the viewer, imposing on the space they lie. It is through their great mass that they give reference to the body. Their forms juxtapose dream-like-qualities, make believe and the hereness and now of the body. "Objects can be animate, where toys, images and abstractions represent (the very things we are most familiar)"(Streicher 10). Through this, Streicher attempts to recreate the childhood experience : forcing the viewer into a tight imposing space reflecting fairy tales and fables: the viewer becomes a child among giants, like Jack and The Beanstalk. The bodyness of his work gives reference to the briefness of life, through the body heaves to the metronome of fans and the flimsy fleshyness of white shiny silk.

The Notion of The Ghost: Emanuel Licha

Ghost, phantom, illusion, petit objet a:

Emanuel Licha's works thrives with the ironic; installations of houses with no entrance, transparent homes and barriers. His works are preformative, incorporating the act of storytelling with investigation. His viewers compete the work, becoming apart of the installation: they become Licha's ghosts, floating aimlessly in contrived spaces. It would not be unusual to enter one of Licha's spaces and view Victorian wallpaper of war, death and execution. To be made aware of destruction through his said "ignorance" to it. The real and the unreal merge to build an atmosphere where the viewer becomes trapped: a ghost behind walls, peering at others below.

Nous habitons des cabanes cadenassées du dedans comme le tombeau des pòetes et celui des momies.

We live in huts, locked from within like the tombs of poets and mummies (Cauquelin 75).

The Grotesque

Marcel's characters are void from narrative, transported, they float in the dissolved spaces of the page. He creates 'stills' that reference cinema and pop-culture- from wonder girl to ET. These absurd frames at a glance, pilot a role very ordinary- his non confrontational style softens his shocking and grotesque subject matter: with crocodiles eating decapitated female heads to drowning girls and circus clowns. Even once realized, to the viewer his images are Innocent, like that of a bizarre and twisted dream.

Marcel Dzama: More Fameous Drawings

Works Cited

Allen, Jan, Catherine Osbore, eds. Erik Edson: Fable.

Ages Etherington Art Center: 2004.

Cauquelin, Anne, Emanuel Licha : un autre fete au meme instant

brille dans Paris Paris : Centre Culturel Canadien, 2005.

Dzama, Marcel, More Fameous Drawings,Winnipeg Canada:

Plug In Editions, 1999.

Kiendl, Anthony, Ven Begamudre, and Jeanne Randolph, eds.

Little Worlds . Regina,Sask: Dunlop Art Gallery, 2001.

Michael, Linda, Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim.

Patricia Piccinini: We Are Family. Australia: Australia Council, 2003.

Streicher, Max, Sleeping Giants. Toronto, Canada: Cambridge

Galleries: Catologue Wood Printing, 1999.