I Keep Having Dreams Within Dreams

At the threshold between mythology, oneiric and digital derives, I Keep Having Dreams Within Dreams unfolds as exploration of the political potential of autofiction and temporary communities to re-enchant the world. Somewhere in between childhood memories and oceanic feelings of the raves, the text is a recollection of memories of Deptford and Nuova Atlantide’s residency interwoven with fragments of dreams, online and wilderness through lock-down. An ode to Kathy Acker’s Dreams Map, Clarice Lispector’s Agua Viva, and Alina Popa’s Imitation of Dream, the text explores the figure of the mermaids as half human and non-human entities that used to seduce sailors with her singing and the recurrence of water metaphors in online navigation, playing with different tones from guided meditation to tarot reading and dreams divination. In this context, autofiction, dreaming and the internet become almost a magical practice, an attempt to crystallise phantasmagorical mental states and prefigure other realities, a glitch of intimacy between strangers. I Keep Having Dreams Within Dreams was written in dialogue with Simon O’Sullivan (From Art Writing to Theory Fiction module at Goldsmiths). Design by Victoria Hermann.