…DREAMS ABOUT GIRLS

A peformative mixed reality installation for a drummer, five dancers, a car in live and virtual reality

An old machine hall, it smells of wet bog. The men work in the hall. They operate computers and machines, they create the rhythm to which they dance. Women from the moor watch them, appear from the dark water and retreat again. The women in the moor have portals that allow access to other worlds: worlds in which men no longer set the pace, but are destroyed by women with dream mechanics.

When Katharina Haverich and her team started an open call to find female interview partners who wanted to talk about their aggressive dreams against men, a lot of aggression (from men) came back. One more reason to tighten the consistency screw a little: the rule of men ends in the electronic parts of the installation. The artist draws on a self-created archive of real dreams of women in which they commit violence against men. These are recreated hyper-realistically in virtual reality – the weapons and skills dreamed up can be used by visitors to the VR rooms and can destroy any man in these worlds.

With “…dreams about girls”, Katharina Haverich constructs an open setting between two worlds. The possibility of creating self-determined and autonomous immersive virtual worlds that do justice to something as intimate as dreaming has only recently become possible. And: the visitors are given the active part here, because the change between the worlds takes place in a self-determined way and at the end there is an invitation to manifest one’s own aggression on a male machine…