The body of the dream
Résumé
“This universal forgotten language / has a different logic / than the conventional language we use / when we are awake / When we are asleep / everything changes / and we awake / into another form of existence / We dream / like a writer directing / his astral body / in his own dreams1”
Extracted from the text Restanten, these lines written by the Flemish artist Jan Fabre define the dream as another form of existence. He compares this common experience with that of writing, evoking the figure of the author during the creative process, offering him a completely unique ability to control or access to the dream world. This text is part of Mount Olympus. To glorify the cult of tragedy. A 24 hours performance, the last monumental performance by Jan Fabre, which lasts twenty-four hours without interruption, testing the daily experience of sleep and turning into a real fight. With Mount Olympus, Fabre takes for the first time “this nocturnal journey” as a topos, but also as a structure. The twenty-four hours are punctuated by explicit dream scenes: this is where the Restanten text is present. In this text, the artist investigates his own dream experience, which is physical and mental, requiring the invention of the concept of “Astral body” to identify the body or the dreamer or of the dreamed person.
The analysis that the seven dream sequences will be the heart of this article: we will explore their structures and contents, focusing on the first of these scenes, which is the matrix of all the others. How does Fabre melt his intimate speech about the dream world with its scenic representation? What narrative strategies does he adopt to represent the dream on stage, this “écriture en image”2 which is usually cracks in the common narrative? What processes does he use to stage the dream, the dreamer’s body and dreamt bodies? These questions will be the core of our communication.