Buying & Selling Dreams

“I will buy your dream.”


Samguk Yusa, Book 1, part 34, Chunchu gong

 

Munhui bought a dream from her sister Bohui. She then married Chunchu who later became King Muyeol of Silla (654-661).

One night Munhui’s sister Bohui had a dream in which she clim­bed So-ak Mountain and urinated. The stream of water from her body rolled down in waves and inundated the whole city of Kyongju.

In the morning she told her sister about it:

“That is very interesting,” said Munhui. “I will buy your dream.”

“What will you give me for it,” Bohui asked.

“I will give you my skirt of embroidered brocade.”

“Very well. I agree.”

Munhui spread her skirt and said, “I am ready to catch your dream.”

“Fine” laughed Bohui. “I give you my dream of last night.”

Munhui smiled. “Thank you, sister. Here is my skirt. Wear it and you will look more beautiful.”

Chunchu and Munhui were formally married.

His six sons, the princes Papmin, Inmun, Munwang, Notan, Chigyong and Kaewon were all born of Munhui who thus fulfilled her sister’s dream, flooding the capital with the issue of her body.


Dream of the Drawing for Everything alchemies dream-like things: images and texts and films and sketches and philosophy and half-thoughts and visions and moments and fragments of all kinds. Resting and exploring here may deepen your relationship with the oneiric and, therefore, all apparent reality. Resting and exploring here may augment your psyche’s healing tendency—as Jung called it—through highlighting and delighting in humanity’s hallucinatory creations. (Without them, after all, neurologists assure us we would go starkers.) It is time there was a potentially infinite, intimate museum to what cannot be seen. Welcome to the museum.

Dream of the Drawing for Everything is some of the collaboration between artist Nuala Clarke & writer Crystal Gandrud. Our work arises out of what dances on the edges of perception and our collective attention gravitates to the dream-like nature of human experience. We have been in collaboration since 2010. Our merged practices of visual and textual art unfold on a continuum, as part of an interconnected series evolving over time. Both performed “Fair Shouldered One” (a book which is not a book) at the &Now Literary Festival in Paris, 2012 and installed “Between Spaces”, a Yeats inspired dreamscape at the Hamilton Gallery, Sligo, 2013. Most recently participated in the Find Arts Project in Castlebar, Ireland. Our public art installation of words and images printed on linen, “Woven Found”, hung on Castle Street. The project won the best commissioning practice award from Allianz Business to Arts, 2014.

Nuala Clarke

Nuala Clarke, visual artist, lives and works between Co. Mayo and New York City. Educated at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, she moved to New York City in 1993. In September 2007, she received a fellowship to the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Mayo and began returning to Ireland from NY to work every year. Clarke has been represented by Boltax Gallery, NY since 2005. Recent shows include, Amid a Space Between: Irish Artists in America at the SFMoMa Artists Gallery, San Francisco, (2012); to Tremble into Stillness, a WB Yeats related show at Hamilton Gallery, Sligo; RHA invited artist; and A drawing for Everything, Ballinglen Arts Foundation (2013). BLINK, a public art installation at the Westport Arts Festival, Co. Mayo (2014). Upcoming shows (2015): Impressions of Yeats, Hamilton Gallery, Sligo; Of this place, Sligo and Madrid.

nualaclarke@gmail.com

Crystal Gandrud

Crystal Gandrud, writer, lives in New York City and Normandy, France. She holds an MFA, Creative Writing and a BFA, Classical Theatre. Recent publications include “Yeatsian: Numberless Dreamers,” The Encyclopedia Project, 2014, “Here,” Lost Magazine, and “Idiom: Woodbird Flies Early,” The Encyclopedia Project. Her dissertation, “Murdoch: the Mandala Maker,” was presented at Kingston University’s Iris Murdoch Conference (2006), London. At the most recent Murdoch Conference, she performed a multi-media excerpt from a work-in-progress entitled “The Forgotten Man,” inspired by Murdoch’s philosophical writings. She is under contract for a memoire entitled “Astonishment: A Litany of the Uncanny.”

gandrud@actuallyorange.com

Tell us your dreams. Dreams are accepted by the editorial staff on the basis of aesthetics. That said, there are certain topics that will not be considered. Extremely violent or pornographic dreams will not be accepted on any basis so please do not submit them.

All dreams must have three components:

1) a title

2) a number of no more than 20 characters (subject to a request to reconsider if that number is already used)

3) your name as you wish it to appear

Dreams may be any length.

Please submit dreams in an attached word document only. If you, as the dreamer, are also a visual artist, you are invited to send one companion image in the form of an attached jpeg of a file size of no larger than 250k (no compressed files). If you are not a visual artist but feel a drawing you have done of the dream deepens the experience of it, please follow the guidelines for submission of an image above. In both cases, please specify if you are willing to publish the text without the image.

info@actuallyorange.com