Awakenings

In the deep dark dread of 4am morning a latchkey turns in a stranger’s door. The stranger could be young, old, man or woman, but they are certainly asleep. Enveloped deep in the downy duvet of their unconscious, probably dreaming, asleep and awake at the same moment. As the door opens downstairs a psychoanalyst, an actress and a photographer let themselves into the sleeping strangers house. An anxious contract has been set in motion, a contract that begins with the voluntary hand over of the keys to this silent house.

Two women and a man creep into the darkened hallway, close the front door and slowly make their way upstairs. They locate the stranger’s bedroom and make themselves ready. The photographer, a man, enters the room with as much stealth as his nerves can muster, approaches the sleeper and takes a 5×4 polaroid photograph of them in their bed. A stolen document perhaps prescient of psychic catastrophes yet to come. The women then enter the room, the psychoanalyst and the actress, and the ‘Awakenings’ begin.

As the sleeper stirs in their dark room they are aware of a hallucination unfolding. The women silently creep around and onto the bed, starting to enact common nightmares, and poses from the dark recesses of the psyche. No words are spoken, no physical contact is made, but contact is being attempted across the void, across the abyss. The women’s movements are slow and precise and they slowly turn out all the lights of reason. A few more photographic documents are made before the three intruders retreat from this private space. Within two minutes of entering they are gone and the sleeper returns to the dream-sleep of life, but with a half remembered story to tell when light breaks.

As ever the photographs and stories remain, containing provoked observations and perhaps the seeds of enlightened analysis.

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