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introduction
This is the second edition of the seasonal <strong>Dreamlands</strong><br />
publication, featuring collaborative ceramic works and<br />
a soundpiece made through community workshops in<br />
Glasgow’s Southside over Autumn and Winter 2022-23.<br />
This edition includes an essay reflecting on a year of<br />
community dream sharing, linking the recurring images<br />
of water voiced by the dreamers to the notion of ‘oceanic<br />
feeling’ and its political implications. This body of work<br />
considers expressions of dreams as communicative<br />
gestures that can operate as a form of social and political<br />
action.<br />
<strong>Dreamlands</strong> is a on-going research project by artist Mina<br />
Heydari-Waite, weaving together ideas arising in<br />
collaboration and conversation with the dreamlands<br />
pottery (a group of women* from global majority<br />
backgrounds**) and in walking together we make the path<br />
(a social dreaming workshop open to people of<br />
marginalised genders***). The project asks: can the act of<br />
sharing our dreams create possibilities for new thought<br />
about how we occupy space in our shared waking world?<br />
<strong>Dreamlands</strong> is a Govanhill Baths Culture Collective project,<br />
interpreting the theme of OCCUPY! through socially<br />
engaged artistic practice.<br />
* our use of the word women is inclusive of trans and intersex women, and<br />
non-binary people who are comfortable in a space that centres the experience<br />
of women.<br />
**global majority is a collective term that refers to people who are Black, Asian,<br />
Brown, mixed-heritage and/or indigenous to the global south.<br />
***my use of the phrase marginalised genders includes transgender women,<br />
cisgender women, transgender men, non-binary people, and other gender<br />
identities that have been systematically oppressed by those in power, both<br />
historically and in the present.
in walking<br />
together we<br />
make the path
A collective of voices weave together a sensorial<br />
soundscape, using fragments drawn from a series of social<br />
dreaming* workshops open to people of marginalised<br />
genders in the Southside of Glasgow. We gathered together<br />
on cold Tuesday nights in a dimly lit community space, our<br />
voices blending to create a shared, constellated dream.<br />
How might our individual dreams manifest if we treat them<br />
as contributions to a shared imagining of the world?<br />
The Autumn Winter 2022-23 dreamers include Charlotte<br />
Bickley, Lisa Bradley, Fibi Cowley, Fi Halliday, Kirstin<br />
Halliday, Mina Heydari-Waite, Ane Lopez, Molly Mae<br />
Whawell, Sarah Martin, Erica Monde, Mindy Ptolomey,<br />
Johanna Saunderson, Catherine Somerville, Muna Sultan,<br />
Lucy Watkins and Sam Wood. The sound piece was created<br />
by Mina Heydari-Waite, alongside producer Ane Lopez and<br />
sound designer William Aikman.<br />
Does anyone have a dream that they would like to share?<br />
*social dreaming is a reflective practice in which people share their dreams and<br />
associated thoughts, layering a collaborative collage of images, ideas, cultural<br />
references and feelings.
Mmmm<br />
close up - and then he suddenly looks like<br />
someone else.<br />
It was this tiny tunnel that went under this, like maybe,<br />
six metre by nine metre boulder and it involved<br />
crawling through this puddle. And you could only just<br />
fit through it. So you had to… kind of trust<br />
that someone else had done this before you and there<br />
was a pathway through.<br />
I was inside a toilet cubicle at work and as I was about<br />
to go back outside I couldn’t remember where I was or<br />
what I was doing there.<br />
I’m on the platform of a subway station, and the<br />
platform starts tilting and becoming very, very<br />
slippery.<br />
And I start sliding very slowly<br />
towards the train tracks. No-one around me notices,<br />
not even when I reach the very edge of the platform.<br />
There were these two people that were across on the<br />
other side of the space that we were in, and they were<br />
submerged in water. The water was quite choppy and<br />
there were a few of us trying to get towards them…<br />
or then we were trying to use a piece of string, to try<br />
and pull them towards us.<br />
Wait!<br />
They weren’t there, but you know, that way you can<br />
just tell that they had been there recently. And there<br />
was a note on a door in the bedroom saying, do<br />
not open. And in my head I’m like, it’s probably just<br />
cleaning supplies. But, I had to open the door. And<br />
there was a whole other flat beyond the door.<br />
I just couldn’t settle her. She started making this funny<br />
shape with her mouth, but no noise was coming out.<br />
Everybody is talking, speaking. I don’t know who’s<br />
sitting behind and who’s coming or going.<br />
Something’s going wrong and I can’t remember what.<br />
I would always wake up to them and think that they were<br />
laughing.<br />
I knew something was off, it didn’t seem like my cat.<br />
But they all kept telling me it was.<br />
Like when I’m looking at this person’s face very<br />
The elevator stops at a floor, but it’s only half the size.<br />
A half floor.<br />
The lift simulated what it would be like in an<br />
earthquake, with the floor shaking. I remember<br />
being completely appalled that no adult had<br />
told me that this is something that could<br />
happen.
And I do feel guilty. I’m like physically hurting him. Not on<br />
purpose, but like I’ll make a mistake and then something<br />
will happen to him.<br />
We’d never told each other that we’d had these<br />
strange dreams about the middle landing before.<br />
And as soon as we spoke about it, the feeling<br />
disappeared.<br />
We had these caterpillars delivered in the post and<br />
raised them, which was actually very useful for<br />
tracking time. The butterflies emerged and we thought<br />
it would be romantic to let one out of the window…<br />
this butterfly floated down from the second floor,<br />
and it landed on the grass below for a split second,<br />
until this crow came down and ate it.<br />
It wasn’t uncomfortable to start with. It was a<br />
little mound, a kind of a rocky crag I suppose.<br />
I was trying to work out what the best way to<br />
go around it was. And I ended up climbing over<br />
the top because it looked the most fun. There<br />
was all this moss and these rocks, and then<br />
these crows, which were kind of taxidermied<br />
into the rocks. I was wriggling over it and my<br />
bare belly was feeling the crows beaks.<br />
Um, my bottom tooth is loose, and I can feel… I don’t know<br />
if you remember the jelly bit that you would get. I am trying<br />
to push the tooth back into the hole. I can’t figure out why<br />
I can’t put it back in. And I pull it out to look and where the<br />
base of the tooth should be, there is a tiny little skull.<br />
I yawned and my jaw<br />
dislocated. It was pitch black<br />
in my room.<br />
He asks this young woman to teach him and his wife how<br />
to swim, but they don’t have any access to a pool. So they<br />
do the front crawl on the carpet and breath training in a<br />
bowl of water and swim their way around their apartment.<br />
I’m in this swimming pool. There’s been a murder, and<br />
the evidence is this smashed figurine stuck<br />
in the pool filter. This wheeler dealer lawyer is kind of<br />
representing me - but he is also Owen Wilson,<br />
the actor.<br />
Every time I look at him, his hair changes, a floppy<br />
mop, a tight perm - oh look! half his moustache has<br />
disappeared. I notice my sandals are rimmed with<br />
blood. Maybe I am the murderer.<br />
I deflect the blame, and then this pool attendant tells<br />
me to stop pointing the finger. I just loose my rag at<br />
him. I’m screaming, and while I don’t push him, the<br />
force of the conflict drives him back.<br />
Did someone put this in my bag?<br />
Somebody has given me this, this child, this<br />
young boy - he is darting all over the place, so<br />
fast that I just can’t contain him.<br />
I have a tiny, tiny, tiny bird living on my palm, so small that
it gets lost in the folds of my hand. It has chicks so small<br />
they are just black specks. I am trying to feed them using<br />
the end of a pin. Eventually they all die, apart from the<br />
father bird who I keep in a tea strainer.<br />
Now everything shifts, and I manage to catch<br />
him in this brown paper bag.<br />
What is it that you lost?<br />
My arm just felt like a foreign object.<br />
She told me that a bear had shredded her whole<br />
house, she described her house as being like, made of<br />
paper.<br />
The light was everywhere. I was scared that he was gonna<br />
die in Pakistan. And when 40 years later, I got the phone<br />
call, I was stuck in the traffic on a dark night and yet again,<br />
there was light everywhere.<br />
The waters rapidly rose from the river, right up into<br />
the windows of the house and then completely<br />
submerged the living room.<br />
Um, and one time I was speaking to my ex-girlfriend on<br />
the phone, I was 19, so it was all very torturous. I walked<br />
into my bedroom on the phone and without thinking<br />
pulled back the curtain. And there was a man standing<br />
there looking at me. I opened the door and he just ran.<br />
There were these two whales, like blue whales, but<br />
the size of orcas. They swam into the living room. The<br />
water is very dark, and I’m looking for my little cousin.<br />
And then these two little dismembered legs pop up.<br />
It almost didn’t sound like a train anymore, it<br />
just sounded like some sort of animal.<br />
We can hear the rumblings every time it goes past. And<br />
sometimes I lie awake thinking about the hole caving in.<br />
A hole appeared in the ceiling and there was<br />
water coming in and mushrooms growing<br />
from the wallpaper.<br />
It’s kind of made me feel differently about what might<br />
be possible. I was part of some sort of ceremony. I<br />
wasn’t really there as a person. I was there as a kind of<br />
container. And I had to kind of like… hug is not really<br />
the right word, but kind of enfold this person.<br />
It’s like the sensation of someone<br />
coming from behind me and<br />
embracing me.<br />
Hmmm<br />
I don’t remember what the game was, but the prize<br />
was like… they were, um, they were a pearl that<br />
was inside a big shell. It was really beautiful… kind<br />
of glistening. And then they unzipped themselves<br />
out of the pearl and unfurled.
Ermmmm…<br />
There was a performance happening in a wooden cubicle.<br />
They got us all to come in and locked the doors. Then<br />
they said, “Now get naked”. And I was like, “No, I’m not<br />
getting naked”. And they were like, “Well, you can’t leave”.<br />
And then I said, ‘I’m having a panic attack”. So I crawled<br />
out underneath the door of the cubicle. I was so angry.<br />
But then, when the door opened… I saw the performance<br />
kind of dissipating; it was all dark, there were all these<br />
butterflies and beautiful naked bodies. And I thought,<br />
“Oh no, I think I kind of missed out now”. But I was still<br />
kind of enraged.<br />
It felt like my bed had slowly tipped and I was sliding<br />
out of it.<br />
I never really landed.<br />
I arrive at the ferry port and I’ve missed the<br />
ferry.<br />
And the water is churning<br />
and the ferry is moving further and further<br />
away.<br />
And the teacher, I remember her particularly hating me<br />
for some reason, asked, “How do you not know that<br />
you’re not dreaming now?”<br />
pottery<br />
the dreamlands
A group of eight women from global majority backgrounds<br />
met fortnightly over 2022 to use clay as a means to think<br />
about dreams and talismans. We came together in different<br />
combinations - as work, school holidays, illness and life’s<br />
various chores and crises allowed - and slowly over the<br />
months we coiled, carved, extruded, poured, buffed and<br />
glazed a body of collaborative work. We talked about<br />
letting the clay lead and about intuitive, sensory, collective<br />
making. We reflected on the ways in which vessels can<br />
carry stories. We thought about special symbols and<br />
charmed objects. We shared the occasional dream. The<br />
transformative processes of working with ceramics<br />
together yielded unexpected results: some objects came<br />
out from their final firings shimmering; others cracked or<br />
warped, their glazes running to fuse pot shard to kiln shelf.<br />
The outcomes of our year of pottering remind us that clay,<br />
like life, often overtakes the plans we impose on it. The<br />
following images document the series of totemic objects<br />
that emerged from the dreamlands pottery.<br />
The <strong>Dreamlands</strong> potters are Syeda Sadaf Anwar, Hanaa<br />
Ahmad, Lottie Brand, Nina Candido, Lydia Gitamvu, Mina<br />
Heydari-Waite, Shanaz Miah and Yas Rahemtulla. The<br />
art direction for the documentation of the group’s work<br />
was by Mina Heydari-Waite, with photography by Jess<br />
Holdengarde and floral design by Molly Mae Whawell.<br />
Photograph of the workshop by Erika Stevenson
we dive, we float,<br />
we drift, we are<br />
swept away and<br />
under…
we dive, we float, we drift, we are swept away and under…<br />
social dreams in Glasgow’s Southside<br />
Mina Heydari-Waite<br />
An essay reflecting on a year of social dreaming<br />
workshops in Glasgow’s Southside, linking the recurring<br />
images of water voiced by the dreamers to the notion of<br />
‘oceanic feeling’ and its political implications.<br />
Thanks to the dreamers who contributed to in<br />
walking together we make the path over 2022 and to<br />
psychotherapist, social dreaming practitioner and<br />
dramatist Laurie Slade for his mentorship during the<br />
development of my ideas around social dreaming.<br />
I sink down on the black plumes of sleep; its thick wings<br />
are pressed to my eyes […] Oh, to awake from dreaming!<br />
Look, there is the chest of drawers. Let me pull myself<br />
out of these waters. But they heap themselves on me;<br />
they sweep me between their great shoulders; I am<br />
turned; I am tumbled; I am stretched, among these long<br />
lights, these long waves, these endless paths, with<br />
people pursuing, pursuing.<br />
Virginia Woolf, The Waves (2000: 14)<br />
On the last Tuesday of the month, I meet with a group of<br />
people in the Southside of Glasgow to share dreams in a<br />
workshop called in walking together we make the path.<br />
The workshop, which has been running since March 2022,<br />
is inspired by social dreaming, a reflective practice in<br />
which people share their dreams and associated thoughts,<br />
weaving together a collaborative collage of images, ideas,<br />
memories and feelings. It’s a free associative process that<br />
seeks to put our ‘rationally’ defined reality in conversation<br />
with our dreaming minds, offering potential for new<br />
perspectives to arise. I am an artist and I host these<br />
workshops as part of an ongoing line of practice-based<br />
research, developing seasonal, episodic soundscapes in<br />
which members of the workshop voice fragments of one<br />
another’s dreams.<br />
The reciprocal relationships between our dreams, our<br />
waking socialities and the representation of dreams<br />
are complex and porous. Dreaming is not exclusively a<br />
private affair, as social dreaming practitioner Laurie Slade<br />
describes: ‘[...] dreams speak of the social realities we are<br />
embedded in - as families, as groups, as communities,<br />
as cultures – as much as they speak of the inner life of<br />
a dreamer’ (2021: 3). With this in mind, the aim of social<br />
dreaming is not to interpret a dream for an individual<br />
dreamer; instead, as with many indigenous traditions, but
to consider a dream as part of a collective matrix. At the<br />
heart of social dreaming is the idea that, through sharing<br />
our dreams, we can create possibilities for new thought<br />
about our shared social context and issues concerning us<br />
collectively.<br />
When it works, when it flows, the workshop operates like<br />
a shared, constellated dream in its own right. Waves of<br />
shared feeling, reverie, mood and tone wash through the<br />
group. Our voices blend, it becomes hard to distinguish<br />
who says what; the dreams become a torrent, tumbling<br />
over one another. In later discussions, dreams from<br />
the group are often misattributed: I was particularly struck<br />
by one participant who was surprised to learn that a<br />
dream they believed they had shared, had actually been<br />
voiced by someone else.<br />
As I prepared for the last workshops of 2022, I had<br />
been researching the notion of ‘oceanic feeling’, and<br />
reading Virginia Woolf’s 1931 The Waves, a novel that she<br />
described as a ‘play-poem’, in which she reflects the fluid<br />
boundaries of selfhood in the water-rhythms of her prose.<br />
Submerged beneath the voices of Woolf’s characters,<br />
there is continuity that resists the atomising orders of<br />
wakefulness, a sense that she later outlined in an essay,<br />
A Sketch of the Past: ‘the whole world is a work of art;<br />
that we are parts of the work of art; we are the music; we<br />
are the thing itself’ (1990: 81). In The Waves, we see one<br />
character, Bernard, ask: ‘“Who am I?” I have been talking<br />
of Bernard, Neville, Jinny, Susan, Rhoda and Louis. Am<br />
I all of them? Am I one and distinct? I do not know’ (2000:<br />
162-3).<br />
‘Oceanic feeling’ is a term conceived by Romain Rolland<br />
in a 1927 letter to Sigmund Freud, in which Rolland draws<br />
upon his experience of mystic traditions to describe a<br />
‘sensation of eternity; of being one with the external world<br />
as a whole’ (Masson, 2012: 33). For Rolland, oceanic feeling<br />
is the affect that ebbs beneath spiritual experiences,<br />
characterised by a sense of boundless porosity that<br />
dissolves the hard boundaries between the self and the<br />
rest of the world. My understanding of the oceanic has<br />
been influenced by poet and scholar Jackie Wang’s essay<br />
Oceanic Feeling and Communist Affect (2016), in which<br />
she explores the social implications of oceanic states,<br />
asking whether they have the potential to aid collectivised<br />
social modes. In my practice, I have found that the idea<br />
of oceanic feeling parallels the affective properties and<br />
generative possibilities of dream states. Both speak to a<br />
primary interconnectedness, the fluidity of networks, and,<br />
in opposition to their cognate binaries of dry land and the<br />
waking world, a sense of vast possibility that challenges<br />
the boundaries of individual subjectivity, linking us to more<br />
collective modes of thought.<br />
Oceanic feeling was dismissed by Freud as an echo of the<br />
lesser consciousnesses of the infant, who is incapable<br />
of distinguishing between themselves, other people and<br />
the rest of the material world. As Wang traces in her essay,<br />
Freud’s conceptualisation of oceanic feeling as infantile<br />
regression was expanded by analyst Julia Kristeva in Black<br />
Sun, as ‘a hallucinated completeness’ linked with female<br />
melancholia; a ‘lethal ocean’ in which the disintegration<br />
of the discrete self is linked to madness and obliteration<br />
(2016). Some of these more compromising affects of<br />
the oceanic are also evoked by the dream from The Waves<br />
that opens this piece: ‘[…] these waves, these endless<br />
paths, with people pursuing […]’. Wang identifies other<br />
schools of thought that reveal Kristeva and Freud’s views<br />
as reductive; however, in step with Kristeva’s identification<br />
of the negative connotations of the oceanic, I recognise<br />
that during the in walking together workshops, feelings<br />
of danger, particularly in relation to dissolution of the<br />
self, have often been expressed through images of water:<br />
‘And you know, I was seeing water every second day.<br />
I’m drowning. I see so much water’ (in walking together
dreamer, 2022). This dreamer echoed Woolf’s description<br />
of a desire to pull themselves ‘out of these waters’: ‘[…]<br />
even though I usually don’t go to the mosque or anything,<br />
I phoned and said, my dreams were okay, but now I’m<br />
drowning’ (in walking together dreamer, 2022). The fear of<br />
being washed away feels all the more potent in a city like<br />
Glasgow, a city shaped by water, carved by the river Clyde<br />
and flattened by a notorious amount of rain. In the 19th<br />
century, the ‘second city’ of the British Empire built<br />
a fifth of that empire’s ships on the banks of Clyde, and its<br />
complex colonial history feeds into its rapid decline as a<br />
major industrial centre and its subsequent shifting urban<br />
identity. I remember the first week I moved to the Southside<br />
of Glasgow, after navigating a flooded drainage gully on<br />
my way home from work, I checked flood maps to gauge<br />
when my first floor tenement flat might be submerged. Is it<br />
any wonder the city’s fluctuating water levels are reflected<br />
in the rising waters of our dreams?<br />
I spoke to Laurie Slade about the more threatening aspects<br />
of the oceanic, and he drew my attention to how these<br />
anxieties feed into a repeated rhythm. This pattern is<br />
often reflected in the rhythm of social dreaming sessions<br />
themselves; we can be anxious to enter the waters, we<br />
enter the collective flow and then, at the end of a session,<br />
we get back onto dry land,tingling. This sense of a<br />
generative, cyclical water-rhythm is reminiscent of Wang’s<br />
description of the work of psychoanalyst Marion Milner.<br />
Milner saw dipping into oceanic states as an essential part<br />
of the creative process, if one can use the subsequent<br />
tingling animation to ‘make something’:<br />
In order to transform the oceanic state into an aesthetic<br />
object the artist must oscillate between different modes<br />
of perception and awareness because the oceanic<br />
state, like dream states, resists signification. In other<br />
words, the writer or artist must “submerge” and then<br />
come to the surface for air.<br />
Wang on Milner, Oceanic Feeling and Communist<br />
Affect (2016)<br />
Throughout the in walking together workshops, water was<br />
omnipresent. In our dreams, we dived, floated, drifted, were<br />
swept away and under seas, viscous liquids and pools<br />
that ‘went metres and metres and metres down’ (in walking<br />
together dreamer, 2022). While, at times, the ocean did<br />
indeed feel lethal, it was also often sensual, joyful, sublime.<br />
Often, the affect induced by what I categorise as ‘the<br />
watery dreams’ was fluid and changing:<br />
We were trying to walk along this beach together in this<br />
howling, howling wind and rain that was just getting<br />
stronger and stronger… and we all had umbrellas,<br />
walking together like Roman soldiers with their shields,<br />
like a tortoise. We came to this huge bridge – like the<br />
golden gate bridge but bigger – and we were struggling<br />
to get across. I didn’t know where we were going or<br />
where we were coming from. The water from the sky<br />
kept coming down and the water underneath the bridge<br />
began to rise. And it became quite clear that we were all<br />
really in peril and that we might not make it across. All of<br />
a sudden this huge wave came, swept us off the bridge<br />
and woke us up. And then we were all in a community<br />
centre together, asking, “Do you think we made it? Do<br />
you think we made it across the bridge?<br />
in walking together we make the path dreamer, 2022<br />
Anticipatory longings and communal desires overflow<br />
themselves in the act of reaching towards their supposed<br />
destination. Heraclitis’ notion that ‘a man never steps in
the same river twice, for the river is not the same river<br />
and the man is not the same man’ comes to mind (Barnes,<br />
2982: 49). Heraclitis’ use of water as a metaphor for life<br />
flow, for a continuous, fluid process of becoming, is<br />
conjured up by this dream: ‘[...] the water from the sky kept<br />
coming down and the water beneath the bridge began to<br />
rise [...]’ (in walking together dreamer 2022). While states<br />
that threaten the boundaries of the discrete self can feel<br />
perilous, they also have a powerful generative potential. As<br />
Rolland framed it, the oceanic is not simply a regressive<br />
return, but ‘part of a mature process of becoming; an<br />
experience of ego loss that enables one to commune with<br />
the “substance” of existence in a way that radically alters<br />
one’s orientation to the world’ (Wang, 2016). In the dream<br />
above, the undefined ‘we’ emerges from the wave that<br />
‘swept us off the bridge and woke us up’ to ask: ‘do you<br />
think we made it?’ ‘We’ are enveloped in the flow, and there<br />
is always a danger (for all of us) that we might not make it.<br />
The waters rapidly rose from the river, right up into the<br />
windows of the house and then completely submerged<br />
the living room. There were these two whales, like blue<br />
whales, but the size of orcas. They swam into the room.<br />
The water is very dark and very deep, and I’m looking for<br />
my wee cousin. And then these two little dismembered<br />
legs pop up.<br />
in walking together we make the path dreamer, 2022<br />
dream is shared it takes on ‘a collective value and social<br />
significance’ (Schmitt, 1999: 274-275). I’ve been reflecting<br />
on how the experience of being socially marginalised, of<br />
having needs that go unmet and voices that are ignored<br />
at systemic levels, might influence how we remember and<br />
share our dreams. Are those marginalised in the waking<br />
world more disposed to dream of new emancipatory<br />
socialities? In The Waves, it is the figure of Rhoda<br />
who operates as an oceanic dreamer, struggling to<br />
distinguish between herself and the rest of the world, her<br />
boundlessness is othered (as mysticism or madness) and<br />
her dreaming is silenced, first through social alienation and<br />
then through death by drowning. If one effect of dreaming<br />
is the ability to conceptualise alternative representations<br />
of things we have trouble picturing or articulating (both<br />
to ourselves and others) – to start thinking through some<br />
of the ‘unthinkably’ difficult struggles of our social lives<br />
(Sliwinski, 2017) – what gushes out when we unblock a<br />
dam?<br />
There were these two people that were across on the<br />
other side of the space that we were in, and they were<br />
like submerged in water, and there was like a few of us<br />
trying to go towards them or, um, get a piece of material<br />
or string to try to pull them towards us. And the water<br />
was quite choppy. Moving, filling this space.<br />
in walking together we make the path dreamer, 2022<br />
The in walking together workshops are open to people of<br />
marginalised genders (women and intersex, transgender<br />
and non-binary people); people whose gender identities<br />
have been oppressed by patriarchal systems, both<br />
historically and in the present. I wonder how this shapes<br />
our shared dream culture (the beliefs, values and<br />
practices of a group of dreamers). From the moment a<br />
Rolland emphasised ‘the energising effect of the oceanic<br />
orientation on social and political action’ (Wang, 2016).<br />
What if, like Wang, we asked what it might mean to<br />
socialise oceanic feeling, starting in our own communities?<br />
One way to do this may be through practices like social<br />
dreaming, where the expression of dreams can be a means<br />
of challenging our hegemonic rationalities. Frantz Fanon
offered us a compelling characterisation of the dream<br />
as a zone in which to develop emancipatory, decolonial<br />
thought (Fanon, 2001: 15). There are many historical<br />
precedents where dreams have been used to radical ends,<br />
as in the testimony of Plenty Coups of the Indigenous<br />
American Crow Nation, who shared a dream-vision with<br />
his community in order to imagine a way to continue in<br />
the face of cultural genocide – and, later, to begin a crosscultural<br />
dialogue with colonisers (Lear, 2006). In this<br />
light, dream sharing is a particular kind of communicative<br />
gesture that ‘can serve as a potent form of political<br />
intervention’, a means of resisting sovereign power<br />
(Sliwinski, 2017: xiii).<br />
We are driving down Kenmure Street. Then we turn into<br />
this big black warehouse with a plain door. We open the<br />
door and walk down these steps leading to this almost<br />
Roman bath like thing, with big stone columns… and<br />
then water was coming up to my calves. I was wearing<br />
these wellies, and I could feel the cold water seeping in.<br />
I knew it couldn’t be real, and I knew I was really feeling<br />
the water.<br />
incredible act of radical imagination. If we want to nurture<br />
modes of political thought capable of ‘creating openings<br />
where there were previously none,’ the aesthetics of<br />
dreams are vital (Wang, 2021). Woolf knew this, and used<br />
the evocation of dreaming and oceanic affect to undermine<br />
the ‘Western valorisation of individual selfhood’ she saw as<br />
fuelling the British imperialist project (Marcus 1997: 155).<br />
The social implications of oceanic and dream states have<br />
the potential to draw us towards an acceptance that we<br />
are all tumbled together in Rolland’s ocean, Heraclitis’<br />
flow, Woolf’s waves, and the choppy waters of our shared,<br />
social dreams. The radical potential of these states to tap<br />
into the porous consciousness of a community is redolent<br />
in the recurring image of water, which points to a sense of<br />
the oceanic as a goal or an aim. In these understandings,<br />
perhaps we can imagine new ways to resist the structures<br />
and states that atomise us, and flow together in the world<br />
we share? If not in a great flow, then perhaps in many<br />
trickles. The dream above was shared ten months after the<br />
Kenmure Street protest, and now, another ten months later,<br />
I can still feel the water seeping in, calling its dreamers<br />
towards acts of radical imagination.<br />
in walking together we make the path dreamer, 2022<br />
In our dreams we know that the ‘not real’ can also be(come)<br />
real. Kenmure Street, in the Southside of Glasgow, is a site<br />
of recent collective action that marked a historic victory for<br />
our community. Early on the morning of the 13th May 2021,<br />
during Eid al-Fitr, a dawn immigration raid resulted in two<br />
of our long-term neighbours being taken from their homes<br />
and detained in an Home Office van. The community, of<br />
which the in walking together dreamers are part, responded<br />
with a spontaneous sit-in protest, surrounding the van for<br />
eight hours until –in an unprecedented turn of events – the<br />
men were released. Our neighbours came together in an
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Lear, Jonathan. Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation.<br />
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