The sleeping body is an iconic state of everyday intimacy, vulnerability and radical power.
S L E E P focuses on the act of sleep to invite transient encounters in the forming of collective experience and thinking within this domain of intimacy. S L E E P acts to see the collective sleeping body as a radical reclamation of public space, wherever this body/bodies appears. S L E E P is a recurring autobiographical experience of retreating, disconnecting. Can sleep as an activity, an action, a decision, a submission, a retreat be contemplated as an intentional act of withdrawal?
Pepita Hesselberth and Joost de Bloois in their book Towards a Politics of Withdrawal introduce withdrawal as a political practice. They argue that contrary to popular reasoning, the act of withdrawal is not apolitical non-action, inoperativity or disengagement; in fact, withdrawal means anything but depoliticisation. To withdraw is not to retreat into passivity, but to displace the situation in which withdrawal is conceived.
This participatory real-time experience explores ‘collective sleep’ as a personal political gesture in the radical reclamation of space, resisting in the realm of public rest and public sleep.
The event is free to attend, but please consider making a £5 suggested donation.
Pushkin House is committed to making all of our events as accessible as possible for every audience member. Please get in touch with us if you have a particular request and we will gladly discuss with you the best way to accommodate it.
About the artist
Moi Tran is a Vietnamese multi-disciplinary artist, designer and educator. Through research, theatre, text, sound, installation and video, her practice examines theorisations on emotional reckoning and states of feeling as valued knowledge, encounters of witnessing in events of fugitive performativity and the politics of sound as critical record. Her recent work with archives engages anarchive practice to disrupt conventional archives, augmenting speculative imaginings to yield multiple possible counter-narratives habitually concealed within archival limits and authority.
She has presented and performed her work nationally and internationally, including Civic Sound Archive (PEER, UK); Reshaping the Collectible (Tate Modern, UK); Sign Chorus National Archives (Da Nang, Vietnam); Sonic Signaling in Reverse (GIBCA, Sweden); The Bolero Effect (VCCA, Vietnam); The Circuit (Prague Quadrennial Festival, Czech Republic); I Love A Broad Margin to My Life (Yeo Workshop, Singapore); Shy God – A Chorus (SPILL International Festival, UK); and S L E E P (Live Art Development Agency, UK). She has recently received a commission from British Council Vietnam to work with An Viet Archives in London, to be presented at LUX (UK and VN).