As Breton says, “Beauty must be shocking, or it will be nothing.” I think surrealism is not only an artistic movement, but also a spiritual revolution, whose core idea inspires us to keep thinking: when reason rules the world, have we become prisoners of order? Are there more real possibilities beyond the edge of human dreams and irrationality? Based on this, I have a new idea about the core topic of the exhibition.
In the initial conception, I planned to capture and reproduce dreams through the effect of the five senses presented to the audience by art works, answering the question “What is a dream?” However, it ignores that the essence of dreams is ineffable that cannot be symbolized, and the deconstruction and reconstruction of dreams is like capturing ethereal ghosts with a large net of image symbols. Hence the paradox at the heart of the original exhibition discussion: the more we try to interpret dreams, the more we misinterpret their origin. In the theoretical system of dreams and the unconscious mind, the aforementioned theories and other theories in the system together form a complex cognitive matrix. However, due to the historical background and social form, the continuous development of digital technology and the cultural context that advocates rationality, all the above-mentioned theories have limitations in various aspects.
In his theory, Freud defined human dreams as “the disguise and satisfaction of repressed desires,” a definition itself rooted in the complex social environment of Vienna at the end of the 19th century. Politically, at that time, the liberal political forces in Austria were suppressed by conservatives, and the social control over individual internalized morality and the suppression of individual desires were strengthened. Economically, the Industrial revolution not only accelerated the urbanization of Vienna, but also led to the instability of the economic situation. The ensuing changes in the family structure (men’s authority in the family was strengthened, but women were confined to the family field) affected the competition and fear of the father’s authority in Freud’s theory. Culturally, in 19th century Europe, strict sexual repression (especially for women) prevailed, and the theories of scientific rationality, such as Darwinian evolution and the physics revolution, shook the original religious worldview. In summary, I think Freud tried to study the subconscious with the “scientific” method representing rationality at that time, trying to reveal the hidden surge of irrational power under the trend of advocating rationality at that time and the spiritual tearing of people due to a series of changes at that time. However, in a society where gender fluidity is enhanced and individual desires are infinitely amplified by the prevalent consumerism, the form of “repression” has changed, people’s “libido” is transformed into user preferences by algorithms, and the platform predicts individual desires by tracking the number of clicks, externalizing the subconscious into the label and slide matching of data flow. In addition, Freud presupposes a continuous individual self in his theory, but the modern identity split (social media personality, game role, workplace personality, etc.) makes the dream no longer belong to a single individual, but a tangle of multiple identities. When a person’s dream identity is also a delivery rider, a virtual idol, and a bank teller, it is obvious that the individual psychological framework of Freudian psychoanalysis cannot be applied directly, which also reflects the paradox mentioned earlier: the more we try to interpret dreams, the more we misinterpret the origin of dreams.
