Hi Julija,
How did you sleep?
Listen, have you ever heard of this division of people “A world is divided into those who can sleep and those who can’t”. (M.D.)? It would be very appropriate for us here… talking to each other and starting each conversation about the calibre of our sleep experiences.
In March 2021, there was a report that Alexander Navalny was being tortured in a Russian prison. He was tortured in various ways, but the most important was to prevent him from falling asleep. Sleep deprivation, while it may even have been fashionable in the past as an indicator of efficiency or performance and success, has in recent years become a sign of illness or of a less than fulfilling life.
Insomnia can be a hindrance as well as a stimulus to creativity, however trite this may sound in the context of all the abundance and positivity philosophies of hubermans et al. Well, here we are, together with the “nocturnal” writers from the pantheon of world literature – Proust, Kafka, Perez, Kawabata, Cioran, Plath, Sonntag. They, too, lived between sleep, insomnia and writing.
The inspiration for the exhibition in the apartment and also DRIFTS art space is my personal insomnia, which lives in spurts, and the recent publication by Semiotexte of the French author Marie Darrieussecq’s book Sleepless. A memoir of insomnia” (pr. “Pas Dormir”).
In her research on insomnia, which she has had for over 20 years, the French writer and psychoanalyst Marie Darrieussecq observes that insomnia is wrongly attributed to a self-reproaching conscience. Marie Darrieussecq describes and weighs up the contributions of alcohol, sleeping pills and sleep specialists in the treatment of insomnia. When others attack her with advice on how to get rid of insomnia, she replies, similarly as I do, that she has tried absolutely everything (‘J’ai tout essayé’). Her list of rituals and tricks is long: yoga, meditation, fasting, a gravity blanket and a synthetic floral mat on which to lie down to rub one’s back and “release” endorphins. The exhibition features works that both respond to the feeling of being an insomniac but also those tricks that seemingly help us to fight sleeplessness.
Hugs,
Justė
Participating artists:
leva Rize, Robertas Antinis Jr., Evita Vasilieva, Delphine Le Jeune , Zoe Williams, Evy Jokhova and Paulius Petraitis, Raimedas Latvys (Fencisuka), Robertas Narkus, Julija Goyd, Viktorija Daniliauskaitė, Violeta Bubelytė, Jonas Mekas.
Curator
Justė Kostikovaitė
Graphic designer
Dalija Kaukėnaitė
Partners:
DRIFTS
AndEditions – limited print run art publishing platform
Meno Parkas
Giedrė Selenytė
Sodas2123
Sigita Šimkūnaitė
IN THE CLOSET
Nunilo Rumbutis
Project financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture
PROJECT PROMOTER: DRIFTS, Justė Kostikovaitė