Dreaming a la Carte: Take Out for the Subconscious

Dan
Tue, 03 May 2011 03:29:29 +0000
Projects, bathroom, food, participatory, performance, storefront, zone-e

Café visitors will order off of a menu of dreams, giving access to the subconscious through the ingestion of a small sample of cheese.

A 2005 study by the British Dairy Board investigated the relationship between the ingestion of cheese before bed and the sleep patterns of the study’s participants. The research unexpectedly discovered that various cheeses produced uniformly similar dreamscapes in a diverse group of participants. For example, Cheddar, America’s most popular cheese, consistently produced dreams involving celebrities. These findings have been used to create a menu of dreams, allowing visitors to the Black Dog Cafe to order the type of dream they’d like to have when their night is done. By ingesting a dream catalyst in the form of a small sample from a selected variety of cheese, participants are able to extend the Northern Spark festival into the personal and mysterious realm of the subconscious.

Visitors to the Black Dog Cafe will find a take out menu of dreams, with specific types of dreams activated by the ingestion of a specific types of cheese. The samples will be complimentary, and will be accompanied by a description of the type of dream the cheese produces. With instructions to ingest twenty minutes before bedtime, visitors will be asked to consider the relationships between input and output, cause and effect, the mysteries of biological processes and the technology of the body. By creating a direct connection between the external world and the private world of dreams, visitors are given agency in relation to their dreaming life and the manifestations of the subconscious.

See what else is happening during Forecast Public Art’s Big Dream project.

Peter McLarnan

Born and raised in Moorhead, MN, Peter McLarnan received his BFA from the University of Minnesota in 2007. He has since exhibited at spaces around Minneapolis, including The Soap Factory, Rosaleaux, Art of This, and the Tweed Museum in Duluth, MN. He has recently completed the production of his first feature film.