2011 – ongoing
The Dreams’ Time Capsule takes the form of a relational project staged through survey-based participatory events; it reflects the movement of time and the oneiric memories we carry into our waking life. The delivering phase, while offering the donors their record after years as gifts from their past, it encourages following reflections on their past expectations towards the future, fragmentations, generational gaps, and tensions dictated by the distance of time.
Stage one – collecting events: the first stage of the project was a series of events where visitors were invited to enter an inflatable structure – the Dream Capsule – placed in various art galleries and external spaces around the world. The structure created a sense of intimacy and solitude – participants entered, usually alone, and were asked to recall and record on a microphone details and memories of dreams that they had experienced. The capsule’s journey began in 2011 in Turin in Italy, and it has since physically engaged participants in many cities in Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.
Stage two – delivering: the project now plans, as was always intended, to send back the dream recordings to the people who donated them. The delivering period offers the donors an insight into their previous expectations about the future, generational gaps, and tensions dictated by the distance of time. In addition, there is the parallel effect left as a trace to the audience: during and after the participatory events, visitors were asked to keep a ‘resonant memorandum’ to pay attention to their ‘oneiric’ activity. The delivering phase while offering the donors their record after years, it may reflect their past expectations towards the future, fragmentations, generational gaps, and tensions dictated by the distance of time. The audio archive has become an open laboratory on the relevance of social and political changes into the personal and intimate sphere of citizens. In fact, the project has traced personal and emotional reactions during the first democratic vote in Egypt after 30 years Mubarak’s dictatorship, and the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. Being a process-based research of about ten years, the project embodies a series of further considerations in “a posteriori” approach intertwined with the more than two thousand donors’ expectations of their lives and social and economic changes in the society.
About the capsule. The inflatable structure was designed to immerse the visitor in a unique experience of intimacy and silence, which favours the story of a dream and its audio recording by a directional microphone. It was purpose built by the artist and designed in collaboration with the Italian designer Michele Tavano. It had to be easily transportable and was able to be folded into a small suitcase.
The aim of this first stage was the creation of a database spanning different continents countries and cultures. The project focused on the relationship between the individual and their society, between the private and the collective spheres, and addresses increasing states of anxiety and fragmentation in the contemporary global community.
Since its inception in 2011, the audio archive generated by this project now contains over 2000 recordings of testimonies in many different languages.
The format of a pop-up exhibition allowed the “time machine” or Time Capsule, to travel across the world. It provided a unique space for people to donate their own dream memory. This gave them the chance to share intimate and personal dream-visions that in sharing become social acts, but also to be involved in the co-creation of the archive: all participants visited and shared their experiences in the same structure that travelled across continents.
Participants were additionally asked to give their date of birth, nationality, and their email address. This last one was very important, because the intention is to contact them again, ten years after the start of the project. That is now, in 2021/2022.
The project was partially supported by the Arkitekturmuseet, Stockholm
www.dreamstimecapsule.com
EXHIBITIONS
Contemporary Locus 11, Carmine Monastery, Bergamo, Italy, September 2016
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, United Kingdom, July 2016
Al Qasbah, upon invitation of Maraya Art Center, Sharjah, Arab United Emirates, March 2016
Sikka Art Fair, Dubai, Arab United Emirates, March 2016
Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy, 2014
Al Riwaq Contemporary Art Space, Manama, Bahrain, March 2014
kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga, Latvia, 2013
Jorge Taleo University Library, Bogotà , Colombia, 2013
Arkitekturmuseet Swedish Museum of Architecture, Stockolm, Sweden, 2012
Fittja Open Festival, Fittja, Sweden, 2012
Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt, 2012
Piazza Santa Teresa/Alberto Peola Gallery, Turin, Italy, 2011.
ARTICLES & CITATIONS IN BOOKS (Selected)
Caldarola, Elisa, (2021) “Improvisation and Installation Art”, in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Improvisation in the Arts, Routledge, London (Forthcoming in July 2021)
Dal Sasso, Davide, Nel segno dell’essenziale. L’arte dopo il concettualismo, Rosenberg & Seller, Turin, 2020
AAVV. Contemporary Locus, Quodlibet, 2020
Frapiccini, Eva (2020), “Traces and Messages: Perspectives of a practitioner” in Roots & Roots, Anno X, n. 33, “Archive is Power”, peer-reviewed article (English)
Frapiccini, Eva; Tattoli Federica (2016) “A conversation about dreams, time, and more” in Fruit of the Forest, October 2016
Bordignon, E.; Frapiccini, E. (2016) “Intervista con Eva Frapiccini. Contemporary Locus 11“, in ATP Diary
Eva Frapiccini, by Luisa Perlo in Working Geographies, Mousse Publishing, Milan, 2016 (Italian / English)
Caldarelli, Alessandra; Frapiccini, Eva, “Manipolare il ricordo per creare infinite realta’ (Manipulation of memory creates endless solutions for reality)” in Inside Art, n. 108, Talarico Publishing, Rome, Italy, 2015 (Italian / English)
Frapiccini, Eva; Dal Sasso, Davide, (2015) “Dialoghi di Estetica”, edited by Davide Dal Sasso, Artribune, May 2015 (Italian)
Frapiccini, E.; Madaro, C.; Paternoster, A., Modelli Organizzativi della Memoria Umana, Functional Organization of the Human Memory
We Traders, by David Sirvent, Domus on line, 2015 (Italian)
Ritratto dell’artista da giovane/Portait of the Artist as a Young (Wo)Man, by Marcella Beccaria, 2014 (Italian/English)
A unique way to interpret dreams by Agnieszka Piechoska, 2014, (English)
Dreams’ Time Capsule project in Riga, by Zane Onckule, 2013 (English)
Tan, Leon, “Dreams’ Time Capsule” in International Award of Public Art, Institute for Public Art, Shanghai University of Arts, 2015
Moroso Award for Contemporary Art, Grafiche Filacorda, Udine, 2013
Crobe, S.; Frapiccini, E. (2012) “L’ampia visione di Eva,” in Il Giornale delle Fondazioni, Venezia
Marsala, Helga (2012) “L’archivio dei sogni è una capsula gonfiabile en plein air…”, in Artribune
Materialising impalpable, volatile states, by Elisa Tosoni, 2012 (English)
Dreams’ Time Capsule, by Bryan Zubay, 2012 (English)
The trip begins, by Magdi Hassan, 2012 (Arabic/English)
