Experiencing a vivid dream reality, I often find myself in between two realities. What I see and do in my dream is no less intense or important than what I do when I am awake. Developing the ability to dream and control my dreams, I create environments or stages in my dream that I remember in detail the next day. I often write them down and analyze them. But above all, I keep the sense of dream as part of my life.
No wonder why the subjects that intrigue me are the dreams as alternative places of existence and action, the human reactions in specific context (this could be related to an experiment or to research), the subconscious and the feelings. In my artistic practice I often transform an emotional situation into a place or into an action.
Emotional contexts that are expressed spatially. In some case the emotional space is translated to a dream reality. In this reality, the protagonist (either it is a person or an object or even a place) becomes simultaneously the observer. There is a distancing that is created by the separation of the conscious self that still controls the dream.
As inspiration for my work I use multiple sources. Until now my artistic research includes physics theories about space time or parallel universes, psychological theories about trauma and subconscious, literature about magical realism and quite a lot cinematic concepts and techniques. Scenarios, interviews of directors and art theory are part of my general research too. My archive consists of extensive notes, mostly phrases or quotes, sketches and scenes of movies as mood boards.
My artistic practice begins with a story, feeling or a dream. A personal situation that I want to share by visualizing it to a moving image. The imagery for me comes intuitively, when I am approaching an idea.
Then I sketch it and I start making the setting. I may search for an existing place or create an installation/stage for my action. Sometimes the process could be inversed. First, find the place or the imagery that interests me to work with and afterwards develop the idea. In that cases, I use my dreams or places which are related to me.
My main medium is video. I usually work with installations, which could be seen as settings or stages where something happened, is happening or will happen. After I construct my space/place, I film it. Sometimes the narration is there, sometimes is absent. The moving image implies time, not necessarily evolving. The time could be circular or fragmental. It’s about a glance, an excerpt of time and space.
The video becomes part of the installation. The perspective/view of the videos is adapted to the exhibition room/space and the projected videos/objects maintain their real dimensions. I aim to create space into space. In other words, it’s an attempt to merge the illustrative/illusion with the real. A reality into a reality.
Consequently, I see my work as an interdisciplinary space that cinema, scenography and art coexist. My goal is to bring the sense of a dream or an alternative reality into our space.
Ι pursue the interaction. It is an invitation for the viewer to accept and join another reality and at the same time an allegory for human emotional interactions.
Dafni Trikatsoula