Somnarium is a walk-in dream room that invites visitors to float between waking and dreaming. Guided meditations, sound installations and drawing processes create a growing collection of collective dream worlds – a space for visions that can become reality. The drawn dreams are exhibited on transparent walls and become a living assemblage. During the entire festival, everyone can book a 25-minute meditation slot between sunrise and sunset (5:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.) (max. 3 people per cycle). Two workshops also offer the opportunity to explore the dream archive experimentally and to experience collective desires in a playful way.
CV
MAJA RENN
born in 1990 in Wrocław (Poland), is a visual and performance artist and the artistic director of the non-profit association bewegende kunstformen in Zürich. Her work, focusing on interspecies entanglement, nurturance, and tentacular dreaming, proposes approaches for envisioning and embodying symbiotic models for the future. Her pieces, often collaborative and transdisciplinary, adopt various forms ranging from immersive dance productions to participatory movement sessions and intimate one-on-one rituals.
She holds an MA in Art Praxis from the Dutch Art Institute in Arnhem (Holland) as well as a post-graduate diploma from the Center of Contemporary Art in Tbilisi (Georgia). She is a founder of the DE LICEIRAS 18 artist-in-residence programme in Porto (Portugal). In recent years she worked for various institutions, including the Zürich University of the Arts (ZHdK), the Schauspielhaus Zürich, and the City of Zürich (Stadt Zürich).
HANA KOKŠALOVÁ
is a multimedia artist, performer, organizer and director based in Ústí nad Labem, Czech republic. Her work blends categories of visual and live performance art, creating hybrid forms. She focuses on the diversity of interpretations of places, exploring the relationships between people and their immediate surroundings, looking for forms of locality that extend into embodied experiences of urban activism. Her projects take the form of performances, participatory happenings with specific groups and interventions in public space. Lately her work moved more into the realm of documentary theater, discovering ways to tell authentic experiences or important stories through authorial collaborative artistic languages.
FABIO DON
is an architect. He graduated in architecture from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) in 2009 under Christian Kerez. In the same year he opened its own office in Zurich. His practice focuses on fundamental issues of architecture and the intersections between design and photography by means of research, writing, teaching and construction. He was granted by the Swiss Government with the ESKAS Excellence Scholarships for Foreign Scholars for the years 2007, 2008 and 2009. In 2006 he was teaching assistant at the University of Applied Sciences Lausitz and between 2009 and 2015 he was scientific researcher and teaching assistant at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH). As an author he contributed to several architectural magazine such Cosa Mentale (Paris), Classeur (Paris), CAN Actions Magazin (Kiev) and Trans Magazine (Zurich). Together with Claudia Mion he is co-editor of the Book „Peter Märkli – Drawings“ (2015).
His works have been exhibited at the 2nd Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam (2005), at the Art Museum Arbon (2014), at the Milan Design Week (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015), at AltaRoma (2011), at the Zurich Design Week (2011), at the ICFF New York Design Week (2012), at the Tokyo Designer Week (2014) and at the Lake Como Architecture Fair (2019). In 2019 he was nominated Selected Creatives of 2019 by the Future Architecture Platform. He is currently collaborating with the Mies van der Rohe Foundation of Barcellona, the SAM Swiss Architecture Museum of Basel, the CAN Actions School Program of Kiev and the Zurich University of Arts ZHdK.
SAVANNAH THEIS
is an artist living in London (UK), training in a somatic facilitation approach called Processwork. Devising and drawing on improvisational techniques from a range of fields, including intergroup dialogue, drawing, writing, choreography, somatic practices and the healing arts, she develops perception exercises exploring how different forms of sensorial attention alter how we relate to ourselves, one another and our surroundings. Often collaborating and co-creating settings for participation, she is interested in communal learning processes and the conditions facilitating how we speak, listen, move and make sense together. Currently evolving through workshops, drawing, performance and video, her work invites consideration of the ways in which different modes of sensing and relating open up understanding of our habits, potentials for change, and capacities to respond. Recent projects include facilitating a series of somatic workshops as part of Maike Hemmers’ exhibition ‘This deep becomes palpable’ at Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam (2022), running an online group using drawing and movement to explore personal and collective dreaming within body symptoms (2021), and working as dramaturg and voice performer for ‘Keep in touch’, Schauspielhaus Zürich, directed by Maja Renn (2021). In 2017 she completed an MFA in art praxis at the Dutch Art Institute.
ZAUMNE
born in 1991 in Poland, is a sound artist and trained sociologist. He focuses his research on contemporary cyber-culture and human moods. His work explores the emotional side of electronic music. Inspired by the concept of trans-rational language (zaum) he blends objets trouvés from the internet with rough and yet soothing melodic backgrounds. Zaumne’s body of work includes, among others, the emotional studies Emo Dub for czaszka.rec (2018), the audio play Inner Focus for the National Gallery of Art Zachęta (2019), an interpretation of Baudelaire’s poetry Élévation for the Mondoj record label (2021) and the hydro-feminist film From Water in collaboration with Grupa Zakole for the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw (2021).
MISIA ŻUREK
*2000 – dancer, performance maker, experimental anthropologist. She did two master’s degrees in 2 countries in 2 years – in Contemporary Physical Performance Making from Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (22-24), and in Anthropology from MISHiS at Adam Mickiewicz University (22-24). She was awarded twice with Rector’s Artistic Scholarship (UAM) and with Poznań Creative Scholarship. She works mainly with performance making, on the border of skill and no skill, improvisation and choreography. She investigates the topic of scores and world making. Her main interests are interbeing, collective inhabiting, anthropology of care, naturecultures, speculative fabulations, remixing and recycling. She is a former member of Młody Teatr Ruchu, physical theatre collective with which she worked in Poznań, Ivano-Frankivsk and Blossin. She performed at Malta Festival with Michael Douglas Kollektiv, Fama Festival with Common Collectiv, Short Waves Festival, Czas Letni. She facilitated workshop in Berlin, Budapest, Paris and Poznań. Her recent performance „unstable worlds: dream of love. love is a dream” was presented in Polish Dance Theatre.