How to Stay Sleepy – Dissections: Yayoi Kusama

What happens in the aftermath of infinity? This is the question that guides research collective The Sociability of Sleep in their exploratory intervention, presented as part of Dissections: Yayoi Kusama. For the occasion, the collective will activate doux soft club’s participatory installation, bleu de lieu.

Again and again, we encounter images of Kusama resting and sleeping in the world of her own work. For each of us, sleep is a nightly practice where we meet the edge of experience, in which we are all experts, and that is always beginning again. Through her art, her techniques of repetition, and her explorations at the edges of perception, the sensible and the real, Kusama provokes that threshold feeling of the fall into sleep, when the world shifts around us and anything becomes possible. Much of her work and life has explored the question of how to make such experiences of intensity and uncertainty both liveable and shareable.

In How to Stay Sleepy, visitors will be invited to experiment with their own experiences at the edge of sleep, the hypnagogic state and the remix of dreams, imagination and the everyday. Guided by The Sociability of Sleep’s team of expert artists, sleep scientists, and fellow sleepers, we invite you to extend the edge of infinity as you step out of Kusama’s world. You may choose how you wish to take part: through the Kusama sleep questionnaire, by recording your sleep rests and remixing the onsite soundscape, by napping alongside the action, opening up the infinite angles of sleep.

Dissections is an ongoing event series presented in conjunction with our exhibition program. Through each of its iterations, Dissections aims to generate interdisciplinary dialogue and foster a renewed engagement with contemporary art through a multiplicity of perspectives.

How To Stay Sleepy is made possible in part by the New Frontiers in Research Fund and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

The activity is presented in French and English.

Date and Time

Saturday, Dec 10 , 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Location