Dani Gal recorded his own brain wave activity during different cycles of sleep as a basis for this electronic composition, which he later made on the historic EMS Synthi 100 – built in 1972 for the electronic studio at Radio Belgrade – by feeding the brain wave patterns into five filters. This sonic landscape, devoid of external sound sources and editorial interventions, operates as a minimally mediated index of the artist’s neurological activity, translated into an abstract auditory field.

The texts on the record – voiced with diverse accents and inflections – are selections of dreams by individuals who were subjected to various conditions of political oppression. Woven together are recollections of Indigenous Americans who documented dreamed encounters with settlers; ordinary citizens in Berlin during the Third Reich; former enslaved people in North America; writers who lived in Stalinist Russia; as well as the dreams of colonized peoples from around the world. This non-linear trans-historical and trans-geographic counter-archive challenges the conventional logic of the archive by preserving what is normally excluded, i.e., ambiguity, affect, anxiety, and helplessness. 

Dani Gal (born 1975 in Jerusalem) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Bezalel Academy for Art and Design in Jerusalem; the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule in Frankfurt/Main; and at Cooper Union in New York. His films and works have been shown widely, including: Venice Biennale (2011); Istanbul Biennale (2011); New Museum, New York (2012); Kunsthalle St. Gallen / Switzerland (2013); The Jewish Museum, New York (2014); Berlinale Forum Expanded (2014); Kunsthaus Zürich (2015); Kunsthalle Wien (2015); documenta 14 (2017); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2018).

The record can be purchased at local bookshops, via the website of Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, and at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein.