The Archetypes found in them, return the perception of collective memory, bringing us closer to the common mythological foundation of humanity encoded in the collective subconscious.

The workshop will invite you to get comfortable in the Community and dare to cross the line of vulnerability. Celebrating our individualities, we will unite into a collective, reclaim the place to which we have a natural right, practice a new model of being in the Community and being THE Community, normalize the break, pause and rest.

_community_

trusting yourself to the Community, and being an active “limb” in it – is a process we should learn at a civilizational level. with the aim of publicizing this statement and making the first contribution to its consolidation, I organized a community building, sleep, dream and fairy tale workshop, which I composed and rendered with Evelina Bartusevičiūtė, the founder of the Avoidless communities initiative. In her architectural practice, Evelina investigates the primary meaning of such definitions as individual / (non)stranger / community / society and questions their role in the existing, established norms of architectural typology, moderates various events that help to at least temporarily distribute the hierarchy of power relations in existing structures and spaces.

the “I’ll read you to dream” workshop invites you to get comfortable in the community and overcome the fear of being vulnerable. while celebrating our uniqueness, we tried to form a one-day community, to appropriate the place, the land, the territory to which we have a natural right, to practice a new model of being and being in the Community, to normalize the break and rest. 

_the cat_

in this experiment , workshop is assigned a code element – the cat – a symbol of independence, but also the need to be taken care of. a cat is a member of the community, inevitably, knowingly or unknowingly surrendering to the hands of others. a cat is a tool for learning to care for another. it is a tool for learning to let others take care of you. in the experiment, the cat and the message it carries are represented by activities with the community, rethinking and creating landscapes of care, normalization of sleep-liberating practices.

_format_

seven people attended the workshop. a public space with features of a private and intimate place was selected: the meadow of the largest forest park in Vilnius, Vingis. after the introductory exercises, participants shared stories of the objects they brought, then the theoretical basis of the workshop and the entire project were revealed. the main axis of the event was the reading session and the search for archetypes in the fairy tales. the workshop ended with a collective reflection.

_objects_

the human world is characterized by its object-fullness: the civilizational breakthrough began with objects; the history of mankind is read from objects; objects reflect mundane life and culture; we work, reproduce, sleep among objects; we are buried with objects. in order to explore the environment we leave behind when we fall asleep and the symbolic obol with which we redeem our journey to another state of consciousness, the participants were asked to bring an object without which they could not imagine their sleep ritual.

participants spend the last minutes before the dream with:

3 notebooks;

3 books;

2 phones;

1 stick of incense;

1 cat toy;

1 pair of socks.

this short study of objects, their role and meaning inspired me to include the question about the object-fullness of the sleep ritual in further studies of dreams and sleep, to make it both a constant element of work with dreamers and an ice-breaker question in private conversations.

_fairy tales_

the process of reading and listening to fairy tales of various nations and cultures echoes a common childhood scenario: by telling and reading fairy tales before bedtime, loved ones awaken the child’s imagination, prepare it for a future dream, and isolate the soul from the events of the conscious world. this ritual helps to create a safe environment in which one is fearless enough to fall asleep. together with Evelina, we wanted to achieve a state of collective trust and security, encourage participants to look at sleep not only as a process of regeneration of the body and mind but also of the personality.

archetypes found in fairy tales, as well as the structure of the fairy tale itself, have many similarities with a dream. Carl Gustav Jung considered archetypes to be a fundamental aspect of dream interpretation. the recurring archetypes in both the fairy tale and the dream bring back awareness of collective memory and bring them closer to the common mythological basis of humanity encoded in the collective subconscious.

_awakening_

resonating and relevant archetypes were found in almost every fairy tale read by the participants. discussion around them allowed the participants, as well as the workshop authors, to discuss and reveal their personal experiences anonymously and under the guise of analyzing the literature. the evocation of collective care and the formation of a one-day community were achieved.