Dreaming in Times of Crisis
In an era of global polycrisis, social unrest, and ecological devastation, where even political movements are absorbed into market logics dream state(s) listens for the frequencies of resistance and renewal that begin in the subconscious - the dream realm. Inspired by collectivism, surrealism, and Black ontological dream frameworks, the project counters extractive tendencies that mine magic in service of reason and control.
DREAM STATE(S)
is a six-part audio series exploring dreaming as a political and liberatory practice. Rooted in sonic ritual, ancestral re-membering, and collective imagination, it gathers conversations with artists, healers, and visionaries who turn to dreams as tools for navigating collapse, remembering worlds beyond the archive, and enacting repair.
The project exists in many forms: as an IRL & URL research framework, an archive of practices, and a woven soundscape of visionary futures carrying the potential to liberate and remember.
This project is funded by Weltoffenes Berlin and supported by Sorora e.V and SAVVY Contemporary.
the World Builder and the oracle
dream state(s) is a collaboration between Gugulethu [Website] [IG], a composer and performing artist, and Ziada [Website] [IG], a data analyst and dream practitioner. Our shared work is a transdisciplinary meditation on sound, collectivism, and intergenerational heritage as tools for liberation. Our transdisciplinary practice merges Gugu's work as a composer and creative strategist with Ziada's as a data scientist and decolonial leadership consultant. Rooted in the sonic lexicons of resistance movements in South Africa and Ethiopia, our collaboration explores dreaming as a site of Pan-African feminist world-building.
We believe this inquiry is a collective one. We welcome conversations, commissions, and collaborations with those who feel a resonance with this practice.
Dreaming as Liberation
Drawing on practices of ceremony, sound, and community, the series opens an intimate portal into dreaming as a collective strategy for worldbuilding and survival. Here, dreaming is not passive escape but an instrument and a technology of embodiment and imagination—reconnecting us to the knowledge that lives in our cells and soil. Dreaming is a communal practice as much as a personal one. As Layla K. Feghali puts it:
"Dreams are a direct connection to the place and the people we come from and the ones yet to arrive — of intuitive cultivation from our deepest source that cannot be broken or taken easily. A dream is a place of internal power, so intimate and boundless, it is unreachable even by the weapons of colonial displacement and occupation, imprisonment and war. Even when we are restricted from our agency in the mundane world, our dreams travel with us as a source of guidance, a light post of power."
