Whether hovering above the ground, swimming through the air or swinging with one’s winglike arms – the dream of flight as a psychic and bodily experience can appear in different modes. Despite the everyday occurrence of human flight in aircrafts, they are unable to be as aerodynamic as birds and the fluidity of their movement remains impossible to simulate. Consequently, the dream of flight with its surreal character is by no means exhausted. Often regarded as a yearning for freedom of motion in space, the desire to conquer the air should not be misjudged as merely a rationalised experience. Rather, the dream of flight positions itself as an aesthetic sensation that seduces the dreamer with its dialectic of heaviness and lightness.

In Parade of Flying Episodes Beate Poikāne depicts the lustful, nocturnal experience in dream sequences. The performance Parade of Flying Episodes (2023), Poikāne’s Master’s research in Scenography at the Art Academy of Latvia, was the starting point for this picturesque venture. Together with Andrejs Poikāns, sound artist, and Laima Jaunzema, choreographer and performer, Poikāne took inspiration from Gaston Bachelard’s essay Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement (1943), mythological legends, science, art-historical discourses, but also personal dream experiences to show a series of flying episodes. In this exhibition context Poikāne extends the artistic research and translates the performative moment into space. The audience is guided through sequences of theatre situations that spotlight object-performers as active agents. A sky-like stage set, kinetic sculptures, video works and a sound installation seduce the audience into a twilight state between dreaming and waking. Hence the self-performing environment invites the audience to dream away within the liminality of fiction and reality.

Beate Poikāne | artist 

Andrejs Poikāns | sound 

Viktoria Weber | curator