Slumber (1994)
In 1994, Janine Antoni slept in a gallery space (Anthony d'Offay Gallery, central London) for a period of eight days and recorded her eye movement with an electroencephalograph machine. Throughout the day she used the produced REM (rapid eye movement) pattern to weave pieces of her nightgown and natural wool into a blanket which she uses to cover her bed at night. This somewhat fulfils a full circle as she is now sleeping with her dreams again that have taken a totally different form. This performance piece is transforming shapeless dreams into a sculptural piece. “Science had made a machine for the body to make a drawing. I love the idea that if art comes from the unconscious, then this particular drawing is coming straight from the unconscious onto the page without an intercession of the conscious mind.” (artist statement).
Just like in her works “Loving care” (1993) and “Lick and Lather” (1993) Antoni uses her own body as a primary tool to participate in laborious and repetitive tasks (like shaping chocolate busts by licking them in “Loving care”). Which is why Janine Antoni’s work has become interesting to me for its ritual like process, weaving her dreams is very repetitive and seems to be rather therapeutic. In the same way knitting has become very therapeutic and repetitive for me. While she is using art to analyse data patterns I am using art to represent already analysed data, which is statistics on sexual violence “An Overview of Sexual Offending in England and Wales.” I am fascinated by the way Antoni turns shapeless dreams that can be positive or negative into a performance piece which itself turns the data into a physical object that then gets recycled as a blanket to sleep on.