DIY: 2018 – Moi Tran: SLEEP

Sleep is not an empty act.
Sleep is Self Care.
Sleep is a Political act.
A symbolic last bastion positioned against a world of ever-accelerating demands.

Deadline for applications: 5pm, Mon 18 June
This DIY is jointly supported by LADA and Rich Mix

Project summary

The sleeping body may be thought of as an iconic state of everyday intimacy or vulnerability, inviting us to notice how the act of sleep is central to understanding our everyday socio-geographical relationships and the establishment of collective identity.

This piece is intended to explore how we can:

1. Form relationships within this domain of intimacy, focusing on the act of sleep to explore transient understanding and construction of identity in collective experience.
2. Use this experience to contemplate the act of ‘Collective Sleep’ as a personal political act.

Marcel Mauss in his “techniques of sleep” states that sleeping is inherently an embodied skill and technique bearing imprints of culture and society, shaped through the element of habit, sleep inherently is a social and inter-corporeal phenomenon.

This event will be a ‘Collective Sleep’ with 20-30 female participants in an overnight sleepover to explore the act of ‘collective sleep’ as a personal and political act.

The ‘Collective Sleep’ will take place over one night from 7pm to 9am. There will be an informal meet and greet as participants are invited to collectively set up a temporary communal sleeping environment to accommodate personal and communal sleeping. The event will conclude with a response sharing after breakfast (provided) between 10am-1pm.

Participants will be asked to bring the following items, a sleep mat/sleeping bag and overnight bag, for participants who cannot provide such, it is possible to supply the necessary to avoid disappointment but please advise us in advance so we can prepare. Most importantly participants should arrive with an open mind to share an intimate place of rest.

The potential of this DIY should expand into a wider social context to examine the value of conscious collective acts as a method to explore identity.

Overnight diaries will be supplied to record thoughts and archived as documentation. The DIY will also be visually documented.

How to apply

This DIY can support 20-30 female participants; a representation of women is particularly desired. Participants should be willing to engage in frank and open conversation, have an interest in arts practice that comments on identity politics, social situations, ethical enquiry of collective experience in live work, alternative activism and a keen interest in examining an open way of making art.

Participants will include emerging artists and those with an established practice in the Performance/Visual Art, and individuals with experience of making feminist, embodied and durational work, who use performance media, or whose practice incorporates visual arts, writing, curating or cultural researchers.

The online application asks for a brief statement on your practice, and a short video indicating why you want to participate, and what you expect the benefits to be. Participants should express interest in discovering alternative processes of art making.

I am keen to encourage women less to likely to have the opportunity to engage in such events to participate, particularly women artist from less visible minority groups. It is important to know that we intend to make this a safe space for all but due to the nature of the work this may be tested. We will provide breakfast and refreshments, overnight accommodation and help to cover costs of travel where possible. Please let us know if you have any access requirements, but please bear in mind that the sleeping arrangements will be very basic. Participants need to be able to be able to safely sleep in such makeshift conditions.

Dates, times and location

Dates: 29 Sep 2018 (overnight into 30 Sep)
Times: 7pm until 1pm the following day
Location: LADA at The Garrett Centre, London

The artist

A refugee of the Vietnam War, my work explores the effects of DIS/placement as an ever-evolving negotiation of East/West identity. A practice I have titled the ‘Eternal detour of identity’. Through Live performance, video, object making, text and installation, my work explores relationships within the domain of everyday immediacy to examine the understanding and construction of transient identity through themes of ‘Common-ism’ – What makes us similar not what makes us different. I am interested in making work that employs alternative ideas of soft activism and protest, a movement celebrating the power of protest through reflective and contemplative actions, that accumulate power over duration and sets questions lingering into the atmosphere.

For questions about this DIY, please contact Moi.