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do you ever dream about work?

stephen kerr
2024


stephen is a graphic designer or a musician or a very weird and long dream.





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Reading an email in a dream and you can hear the voices of every word you read. Or the one where you’re on a computer working, frantically typing, late, stressed, rushed. What about that dream where you had no idea how to do your job, everyone is going to know you’re a fake. In this project I have made spaces for us to share our dreams about labour, and through that allow conversations about our work, our working conditions, and the feelings we’re left with when we fall asleep each night.

For the past year I have spoken with designers, artists and makers finding out how they spend their time in everyday life, what they believe and how they feel. In our dreams we feel the weird bits the most: hmm a bit uncomfortable, ooh that gave me a fright, aah so, so sad. Through performances, online tools and storytelling, I want to hold these dreams together, to unite our experiences. Online I have made tools to gather stories and tools to tell them. I have facilitated group dream re-enactments (a few times), using felt dolls to share our night time theatre.

stephen kerr is a graphic designer or a musician or a very weird and long dream.


Keyboard of things designers have said. Our feelings about work.
The messages on the keys were gathered using experimental interview methods and questions.
Except “it’s ok”: my brother said that to me on the phone one day.
Web page to share and read labour dreams. Scroll down for more.
Interactive dream telling. Click then type your story.
Re-enacting dreams about work at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.
Collective dream re-enactment at Art Meets Radical Openness, Linz.
Where do dreams come from?

Licensing information

This work is free to distribute or modify under the terms of the SIXX license as published by XPUB, either version one of the SIXX License or any later version. See the SIXX License for more details. A copy of the license can be found on vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/license.