Embodying dreams and emotions in the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area

Abstract

As part of the interdisciplinary project Atlas of Dreams, I created a series of artistic maps, that both show the places where 400 dreamers recounted their memorable dreams and also depict the emotional impact of these narratives in the grid of cities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Atlas of Dreams aims at uncovering the emotional life of cities. I present, from my perspective as both a visual artist and an ethnographer, how the embodied art practices of dérive and the Surrealist techniques of frottage contributed to recreate the dream process, as well as to the creation of a multimodal ethnography.