Five lightboxes are arranged side-by-side. Each lightbox corresponds to a page of an ever-expanding book – the work takes the form of a deconstructed dream book. Dream books belong to a long tradition of interpretive texts that began with Artemidorus in Ancient Greece and made their way to 20th century Harlem: translated, remixed, repurposed. The dream interpretations evolved to make the information more relevant to the target audience, and the books play to their everyday anxieties: worries about violence, work, and debt. So one would read the book, interpret a dream, and use the associated numerical combination to play in the local lottery. The work comes out of this research but takes a different form — a 21st century illuminated manuscript, something between altarpiece and advertisement. It’s about how all these things intersect: commerce, belief, chance, the everyday. How knowledge is produced. What constitutes knowledge in the first place.

The work was initially exhibited with an accompanying zine, which can be found here.