Instructor:
Dreams have long offered a resource for art and radical politics. At times associated with the voice of the gods, ancestors, nature, or the Fates, dreams have helped critics question their society and its rules. In our modern world enthralled with empiricism or hard-nosed realism, however, dreams can seem trivial, even useless. Why dream when you can work? This class invites students to consider otherwise. We will revisit the art and politics of dreaming by returning to the twentieth century poets, painters, and photographers who took it most seriously: the Surrealists. These men and women did not consider dreams frivolous. They saw in dreams an opportunity to rethink the limits of science and to critique the routines of modern life, especially market exchange, sexual repression, and bureaucracy. Though we will study Surrealist words and images, we will also follow their examples and see where they take us. The class will put together a small multimedia exhibition for the wider public. By engaging in Surrealist activity together, we will try to answer its famous question: “Can’t the dream be used in solving the fundamental problems of life?”