Archive of Dreams – A Surrealist Impulse

The book Archive of Dreams is published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name that will open the Archiv der Avantgarden. Marking the hundredth anniversary of the first surrealist manifesto and the founding of the Bureau of Surrealist Research in Paris in 1924, the volume is dedicated to the surrealist movement as well as the networks it engendered and the artistic stimuli it provided in the twentieth century. The idea was for the Bureau to collect dream testimonies in whatever form, not only to preserve and analyse them but also to give active expression to them in artistic processes. The publication shows how the practices of the avantgardes blurred the boundaries between dream and reality, between the traditional, passive notion of the archive and the idea of active, innovative artistic experiment — and thus ultimately also between the past, the present, and possible futures. Works and documents from the period before, during, and after the Second World War shed light on the working methods of international artists and the global network they were involved in. They are complemented by diverse reflections on global protest movements and the traumas of war, thus connecting, too, to everyday experiences in a Europe beset by warfare.