Join actor and comedian Ed Reggi this Saturday for the Pulitzer’s final Dreamtime Storytime. Ed will invite visitors to participate in improv exercises which encourage living in the moment and fully experiencing one’s surroundings. Both of these skills will in turn help you appreciate the artworks on display and the Pulitzer building. Come join the fun!

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Last month’s dreamers for Dreamtime Storytime were members of the Slightly Askew Theatre Ensemble. To read about their performance and to view photos, click here.

How do psychoanalysts interpret dreams? Bernard Feinberg, a psychoanalyst, describes how he would interpret a patient’s dream if it had the same plot as Max Klinger’s A Glove.

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A Glove

A Portfolio of Ten Etchings (1881) by Max Klinger

Comments from the Perspective of the Unconscious and Dream Theory

by Bernard Feinberg, MD

 
When I had the pleasure of seeing this series of etchings for the first time, I was intrigued by the artist’s understanding of the Unconscious and dreams. Though Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. (1900).was revolutionary as a scientific study of dreams, he was not alone in intuiting the workings of the unconscious and its expression in dreams. 

My plan is briefly to describe the logic that prevails in the unconscious and then to suggest how this logic governs the drama that unfolds in the etchings. Please hold onto your socks because the logic I describe will be utterly illogical from the point of view of normal consciousness. … Read the rest of Bernard Feinberg’s comments.

by Cliff Froehlich, Executive Director of Cinema St. Louis

In partnership with Cinema St. Louis, The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts invited local filmmakers to realize their dreams–that is, to make oneiric works in conjunction with the Pulitzer’s exhibition Dreamscapes–and the results will soon shimmer into view, in an appropriately surreal manner, on the building’s walls.

Thirty-three films were submitted, diving deep into their makers’ unconscious. From the sunken treasure hauled up from the darkness, Cinema St. Louis has selected twenty-two videos to display on Friday, June 24. As night falls, the films will be projected onto three of the Pulitzer’s façades, inviting viewers to share in the creators’ entrancing dreams and disquieting nightmares.

The free event, Dream Sequences: Film Night at the Pulitzer with Cinema St. Louis, begins at 8pm, with the locally produced works serving as palate-whetting appetizer for the main course: a double bill by surrealist master Luis Buñuel. Buñuel’s films, the short Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) and the feature The Phantom of Liberty, will be projected across the Pulitzer’s shared courtyard onto the wall of Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; chairs will be supplied.

Leading off the Buñuel program will be a pair of exceptional films from the St. Louis film competition: Zlatko Cosic’s Brainstorm, which received honorable mention, and Brendan Leahy’s The Tower, which was awarded a $500 prize. The Buñuels and the spotlighted local works will be played with sound; the films projected on the Pulitzer’s walls will be silent.

The other Dreamscapes competition works chosen to screen are the following:

Artifacts, directed by Michael McCubbins
Blackbirds, directed by Alex Lopez
Calling the Loop, directed by Amy Mack
Dog’s Dream, directed by William Morris
The Divide, directed by Trent Fred
The Inheritance, directed by Sandra Olmsted and Vanessa Roman
A Lens Apart, directed by William Flynn
Love, Guns and Amy, directed by Marttise Roosevelt Hill
Lucy’s Dream, directed by Clara Smith
Prelom, directed by Zlatko Cosic
Rapunzel, directed by Marie Bannerot McInerney
Rare Gold, directed by Peter McLeod Seay
Sleep Film, directed by Jonathan Eberle
Swing, directed by William Morris
Terranocturne, directed by R D Zurick
This Monstrous Traveler in Hashish, directed by Chris King and Poetry Scores
Transmorph Dreams, directed by Erin Taylor
Untie, Unfasten, Undo, directed by Amanda Pfister and Manda Remmen
When …, directed by Bruce Van Reed
Who Is This Place, directed by Jacob Lanum Read the rest of this entry »

Still wondering what a dream matrix is? Watch art therapist Shelly Goebl-Parker’s interview on KPLR today. Join Shelly at the Pulitzer this Saturday to actually experience one.

Ronald Gore Jr (middle) reads from The Merchant of Venice with another alumni from Prison Performing Arts last Wednesday.

I was anxiously awaiting the start of our first SHAKE-38 reading: scenes from The Merchant of Venice. As it turned out, we started what seemed to be a great atmosphere in front of the Watercourt, where the audience was all sitting around in front of us on the stairs and in chairs. Once we started reading, a tornado warning went off, and I had to take my Shakespeare hat off and get in gallery assistant mode to lead everyone to our emergency spot in the building, the hallway in the lower level. Once everyone was safe, we decided to finish the reading. It was going great at first, until you could hear the hail hit the building, and I didn’t know whether to read or run! But I let my knowledge of this building not only calm me but the guests as well (there are few safer places to be during a storm than the Pulitzer building with its sturdy, concrete construction). We finished the reading and everyone forgot about the storm and loved the reading.--Ronald Gore Jr, Gallery Assistant and actor in Prisoner Performing Arts Alumni Theatre Company

The actors and audience continue in the hallway of the lower level post-tornado sirens.

This past Saturday, Nicky Rainey (StudioSTL Workshop Coordinator) and I took young authors and their parents around Dreamscapes, as the group wrote stories inspired by artworks and the Pulitzer building. This is what Kyle imagined while looking at Do Ho Suh’s Staircase–Pulitzer Version. View more photos from this session of Dreamtime Storytime on the Pulitzer’s Flickr page.

The Pulitzer’s web catalogue for Dreamscapes launched last week, and we’re really excited about it. The catalogue serves not only to give a glimpse at the works in their temporary habitat, but it offers a  background to the exhibition, artists quotes, and documentation of our events and programs. Here’s an overview of dreamscapes.pulitzerarts.org:

Introduction: Read introductions from Emily Rauh Pulitzer and senior curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra about the exhibition. Download a checklist of all the works featured in Dreamscapes.

Exhibition: Explore the works in Dreamscapes, beginning with a beautiful mosaic of installation shots. Click on works to see additional images and artist quotes. Click on “The Space” for a map of the galleries, and see how the works are placed within the Ando building.

Events & Programs: Stay up to date on what’s happening at the Pulitzer and see what has already happened in conjunction with this exhibition.

Community Projects: Learn about the social work programs related to Dreamscapes. The Pulitzer is partnering with Beyond Housing, an organization that offers an array of services to the St. Louis community.

Exhibition Blog: Click on categories to see blog posts related to what you want to know about, whether that’s programming, particular artists, or social work projects.

In connection with Frame of Reference, Sarah Westphal-Wihl, Associate Professor of German at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses Albrecht Dürer’s print The Temptation of the Idler:

I will begin by identifying the figures in this image and surveying the remarkable setting in which they are placed. A female nude, probably a representation of the goddess Venus and thus a personification of desire, sexuality, beauty, and fertility, dominates the image and commands the viewer’s attention. Her mythological identity is supported by the presence in the lower left corner of a winged putto, the boy-god Cupid, who was a son of the goddess. His “modesty” drapery echoes that of the female figure and seems to relate him to her. Cupid is absorbed with trying out a set of stilts that are the just right size for a small child’s toy. A slightly corpulent man wearing a sleeping cap, a roomy housecoat or robe, and slippers, sleeps on a high bench in the background. A dragon-like demon (or a demonic dragon) hovers near the upper right margin of the image, holding a bellows aimed at the ear of the sleeper. With bat wings, clawed hands, and the stubby features of a devil, it is reminiscent of a grotesque from the margins of a medieval manuscript. READ THE REST OF WESTPHAL-WIHL’S PAPER HERE.

You’ll be able to see an image of The Temptation of the Idler on our Dreamscapes web catalogue, which launches soon, and the next time you tour the exhibition.

Cinema St. Louis and The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts invite St. Louis-area filmmakers to project their imaginations on the Pulitzer’s world-renowned building by creating short silent films that employ dreamlike imagery.

In conjunction with the current exhibition Dreamscapes, on view until August 13, the Pulitzer will host an event that showcases dream-related films by local filmmakers. These shorts will be projected on several exterior surfaces at the Pulitzer on Friday, June 24, at 8:00 p.m.

One of the works–chosen by the Pulitzer and Cinema St. Louis–will be highlighted at the event, and the filmmaker will receive a prize of $500.

Cinema St. Louis will also choose several of the films to screen as part of the
St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase, held in early August.

READ MORE AT CINEMASTLOUIS.ORG.

Dream Sounds poster, designed and printed by The Firecracker Press

Reached just before naptime, St. Louis spoken word artist Brett Underwood said, “I don’t know what to expect, so how can you? Josh and I will be having some of the same kind of fun that we had when I followed him on the air all those nights. I have written one new piece for this session already…what’s it called?…oh, ‘The Liar Has a Squirrel’…and hope to write another or three this week. We are both flattered and excited about the opportunity to play Ear Doctors in such a setting.”

This Sunday, from 1-4pm, as CAM is celebrating Misterios de Mayo/Running of the Bulls Family Day Fun Run next door, the Pulitzer and 88.1 KDHX will offer Dream Sounds, the first in a series of music shows inspired by Dreamscapes. Late-night radio veterans Josh Weinstein (also a sound waves veteran) and Brett Underwood will bring you a subtle and surprising array of music and spoken word to enhance your dreamlike experience as you walk through our current exhibition.

Weinstein’s All Soul, No Borders and Underwood’s The No Show graced, amused and opened the ears and minds of KDHX listeners for several years before Underwood left the airwaves to concentrate on the promotion of live music and his own writing and performance. The two are reuniting to offer a jazzy and surreal array gleaned from artists who have composed, improvised and recorded outside the bounds of the mainstream throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

Weinstein trained in Jazz Studies at New York University and under master NYC avant-garde jazz bassist William Parker. He has performed improvisation with Zimbabwe Nkenya, Bobo Shaw and K. Curtis Lyle and the St. Louis groups Human Arts Trio, Melodies of the Kabbalah and May Day Orchestra.

Underwood comes from a free and automatic writing “school of thought”. He has performed with Get Born and Chance Operations. He has been published in Bad Shoe, 52nd City and The Bicycle Review. He will be reading from his own work and that of select Surrealist poets on Sunday.

Following Dream Sounds will be on July 30 and August 13, from 6-9 p.m. Admission is always free.