Bedtime Chronicles

Right now, in this part of the world, that is — Berlin, Germany, June, 2024 (the here and now) — a group of artists (we, a temporary unit) have put together a thing — specifically, an art exhibition. Beyond that, this is also the beginning of a collaboration between strangers from different places, with future here-and-nows, and an evolving configuration of we. Most importantly, this is an invitation to share an experience that attempts to re-contour time and space, so that the temporary we also includes you, and together we go on a dream-like meandering that is at times whimsical and provocative, while in other instances resembles a nightmare.

Bedtime Chronicles, a group exhibition at SAP Space, presents works by Diane Lavoie, Andrew j Burford, Mike Chattem, Nick Crowe & Ian Rawlinson, Matthew Kelly Debbaudt, Keenan Derby, Lesya Godfrey, Easton Miller, Ilyn Wong, and Anna Zakeij. It is part of the B-LA-M festival, a three year art exchange created to deepen the relationships between the independent art scenes of Berlin, Los Angeles & Mexico City. In its first iteration, SAP Space is collaborating with ALSO in Los Angeles, and the exhibition is a joint production by artists from both cities.

It so happens that right now in this part of the world, summer is in full swing, which means that the days are long, and everything is alive and buzzing. The long hours of daylight in midsummer impart a dreaminess that can be disorienting, so that the here and now can somehow feel like a memory. Midsummer is, in a way, a collision. The body-memory of all previous long summer nights and midsummer dreams.

With this dreaminess at its core, Bedtime Chronicles meanders in and out of focus, and narrates a woven tale dictated by dream logic. It supposes that if everything is dreamy, every space must be a bedroom, and every moment must be dominated by the blurriness of bedtime. Bedtime, like midsummer, is also a collision — an undefined period of time that can, under different circumstances, feel like eons or a split second. Whether alone or shared, bedtime can promise intimacy, illuminate loneliness, or be utterly mundane. Bedtime is always a slippage into the unknown.

The scarcity of warm summer months here in Berlin lends the acuity of the dreaminess of this particular here-and-now, and artworks conceived and made in a far-away city in which warm days are plentiful take on different meanings here. Much like how dreams emerge as mysterious patchworks of waking life, this dream sequenceis a manifestation of seemingly disparate artistic voices converging on one place, coherent through the universality of two facts of life: that dreams are never reliable, and bedtime always comes around. Perhaps what we do have in common is that we’ve all sought out life paths in cities that we did not come from, whether it is LA or Berlin, figuring out how to manifest dreams of a different kind.