Social Matters and Dreaming Series

SDM#3

Hosts: Juliet Scott and Bongsu Park

18 participants and 3 staff on Zoom

Dreams: 10

Associations: 41

Sensemaking: After two intense sessions, this third, last Social Dreaming Matrix seemed to conclude with a feeling that there is always sunshine after the storm. After winter comes spring, after cold days comes warmth. Is there a new era about to begin? Can we collectively reverse the terrifying results of the climate change? No one wants to be cold, but we all need ice to survive. Ecologically speaking, ice is needed to keep the planet safe and well. ‘If no man is an island’, how can we work towards this collectively?

Themes: warmth; light; sunshine; being a part of a group, a collective; ice; intruders; climate change: how to stop it?; the unnaturalness of an online experience; COP26 in Glasgow; ‘no man is an island’, saving the world; privilege; ‘are we all on the same boat?’; silence as part of the music; linearity versus fragmentation; eyes (ice) as the windows of the soul

Dream 1: I dreamt about a time when I was 3-4 years old. I was hugging my dad. He was hugging me with his warm hands, and he put his hands on my head.

Associations: Warmth; the warmth of sunshine; nature; trees; garden

Dream 2: I dreamt of a friend who passed away last year. We met in a café and we exchanged small gifts, something like flowers. It was a very good dream.

Associations: The tree of life; warmth, light

Dream 3: I was floating on a mattress on an open sea. There was no one else, just me. The sky was clear. I remember looking at it and just floating on the water. It was quite euphoric.

Dream 4: I was dreaming of a friend I had in Ethiopia – there’s war happening there now. I dreamt that he called and said that he is coming to visit me in Amsterdam. I was thinking that he would have to stay in my living room, but then I thought that I have a spare room. It was nice on one hand, but there was also a sense of someone intruding, all these ambivalent feelings.

Dream 5: I was somewhere far away, maybe in Russia. It was during the winter, there was ice all around and it was really cold. I suddenly saw a body with its face up. It looked odd – it seemed fine and healthy, not scary. I remember thinking: Is this a person? Are they still living? I fought they were dead.

Dream 6: I once had a dream about being in Antarctica. Suddenly I was under the ice, in a cosy house of an old man. We were hanging around in that house.

Dream 7: In my dream, I was working as part of a bigger group. We invented a new way to work with the rising temperature on the planet. We controlled the situation with very big monitors and intervened, when necessary, to cool it down. To do that, we used water, ice, and other materials. This felt like very important work, and we were happy to do it.

Associations: Power; global summit in Glasgow; climate change; winter; ice and cold; in Afghanistan, the majority of the population will soon be without food (they will be under the ice and now they are just starting to see the snow); walking through ice barefoot; blue-green hue of an iceberg in Antarctica; fairy tales about an ice queen who cannot seem to melt; geological systems, rocks as the refrigeratory system of the world; ‘let it go’; elusiveness; things disappearing; people going in and out; Zoom – an alter world that is happening here, the dreams are elusive and we are also elusive somehow; the unnaturalness of being stuck together online; growing up in a town with a pond, ice skating on a pond as a child; Iceland and coming down the mountain; the new Facebook business module: moving into a metaverse, visualizing the metaverse as a cold and icy space

Dream 9: I was in Ireland with a group of people, the sun was high up, in the middle of the sky, but it changed very quickly. We swam on the sea and ran up and down altogether.

Associations: after winter comes spring; ‘cold hands and warm hearts’

Dream 10: I was on an island; the water was going up and down. It was sunny. I’ve heard someone I know in the house nearby, they’ve announced that they will do some yoga. I went there and I found my sister sitting on a yoga mat. I came up to her and remember her looking at me. Then the dream ended.

Associations: islands and archipelagos; where are the plants that were here at the beginning? Where are they now?; swimming in the winter, the difference in temperatures: it’s freezing cold when you enter, but then it gets warm, your body adjusts; what is it that gets preserved in ice and cold places?; sometimes, the ice makes it possible to travel; ‘no man is an island’; Glasgow summit: they aren’t trying to ‘break the ice’, they are ‘inventing the ice’ to make it possible for people to travel between the islands, in which we are all stuck; NASA and sending expeditions to Mars: curiosity, finding undetected organisms there, penguins crossing the ice and the snow; new James Bond movie, is Bond going to save our world or are people in Glasgow doing that?; being privileged – there are so many people in the world who suffer and who are very poor, and the number of them is constantly increasing; are ‘we are all on the same boat’?

Dream Reflection Dialogue (associations at the end of the meeting): what will happen to humanity?; silences, gaps, continuity versus discontinuity, linearity versus fragmentation; is the change going to be reversible?; A new era is coming, we are experiencing change; the pause is part of the music; fragmentation; technology; artworks made from ice; being ice cold instead of warm?; the delicacy of ice and the necessity of ice, we don’t want to be cold but we also don’t want the ice to melt – ecologically ice is needed; Chinese saying: the eyes are the windows of the soul (the ice?); playing on the ice – danger – you might drown; cooperation, we need others.

NB If you would like to submit your private dream to a Dream Auction taking place on the 20th of November 2021, please get in touch with Bongsu Park by Thursday 11 November.