we imitate sleep to dream of dissent is a printed project that brings together ten artists to explore slowness as praxis through an expanded performance art lens.

Guided by five Fluxus-inspired prompts, dreamer-participants Jacqui Arntfield, Ellen Bleiwas, Simon Fuh, Chris Mendoza, Dana Prieto, Matt Nish-Lapidus, Mehrnaz Rohbakhsh, St Marie φ Walker, along with the project’s creator, Emily DiCarlo engaged at their own pace with short readings, various media and creative exercises to investigate rest as a radical gesture in a grinding, non-stop 24/7 world.

An open invitation to future readers, the performance prompts function as an alternative embodied approach to traditional research, encouraging participants to trust their intuition and lean into play — to experiment with the ephemeral and dream of alternatives to our current temporal predicament.

One part performance document and one part field guide, this textual iteration of we imitate sleep to dream of dissent presents each participant’s findings as an example for creative experimentation and a map for future self-practice.

Stock List: Art Metropole
Published in Toronto, Canada.
Editor: Emily DiCarlo
Design: Elise Castrodale / Studio Castrodale
Essay Editor: Laura Demers
Printers: Italic Press