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This episode is a conversation between artists Erika Sprey and Mala Kline. Erika is an artist-researcher, writer, and independent curator based in Brussels and Mala is a performer, choreographer and writer based in Slovenia. They've collaborated several times.
In this episode, Erika and Mala speak from within their practices, which have specific cosmologies and belief systems that surround dreaming. The discussion explores their experiences of artistic and therapeutic techniques, drawing on many traditions and teachings from different cultures.

Find out more about Erika and Mala on our People page.

To the Glossary Erika donates Crianza Mutua and Maria donates Practice The practice is the activation of the research, the moment the research is put out into the world, allowed to breath and breed with what surrounds it. and Presence To be present is to be and breathe in the practice. .

This episode, is part of a series of a sharp prickled growth on flower stems, found on roses. thorns a sharp prickled growth on flower stems, found on roses. called Dreaming Communities. It is curated by Victoria Pérez Royo and hosts invited artists who work with ‘dreaming substance.’ Here the adjective “dreaming” does not refer solely to nighttime sleep, but serves as an umbrella term for a whole series of images that have been conceived in a fragmentary and scattered way in various disciplines and practices: memories, anticipations, daydreams and night dreams, ghosts and specters, visions, and hallucinations, among others.

Here you can read a full text about the series, written by Victoria.

This series is produced and edited by Hester Cant. The series is curated by Victoria Pérez Royo with additional concept and direction by Martin Hargreaves and Izzy Galbraith.

Transcript:

MARTIN:

Hello and welcome to Thorns, a podcast where we bring you conversations in relation to concepts of the choreographic the choreographic can refer to choreography, and to the writing of dancing bodies, but it can also refer to modes of generating and circumscribing movement that do not register as dance, or as art works.. Thorns is produced as part of the Rose Choreographic School Gathering places for teaching and learning. Also, a school of thought is an idiom that suggests the sharing of traditions of philosophical and intellectual practices. at Sadlers Wells. I'm Martin Hargreaves, Head of the Choreographic School and we are compiling a glossary of words donated by people that collaborate with us. You can find this glossary on our website. I've invited performing arts researcher Victoria Pérez Royo, to curate a miniseries of the podcast, and this is how Victoria frames the ideas behind her curation.

VICTORIA:

This miniseries called Dreaming Communities; we are a group of people having conversations around what we call the dreaming substance, meaning all the work developed around images that do not appear on a material surface outside of the body.

MARTIN

This episode is a conversation between artists Erika Sprey and Mala Kline. They've collaborated several times, and in this conversation you'll hear them speaking from within their practices, which have specific cosmologies and belief systems that surround dreaming. The discussion explores their experiences of artistic and therapeutic techniques, drawing on many traditions and teachings from different cultures. The conversation was recorded with Erika in a studio in Brussels and Mala and Ljubljana. The transition sounds you will hear in this episode are field recordings from Mala. There is a full transcript available for this episode on our website together with any relevant links to the resources mentioned.

ERIKA

So, I am Erika Sprey, she/her, from a Mexican-Dutch background living in, currently in Brussels. I would probably call myself a curator, researcher, dreamer, and I recently opened, as well, a project space/bookstore called Zig Zag Reading Room in collaboration with Hopscotch reading room in Brussels. So how I got into this topic is already a long while ago. I was curating a long running curatorial program for an art school in the Hague for two years, called Wxtch Craft. And this evolved very naturally, organically into Earth Craft. And I conceived this longstanding curatorial program as a well, initially, a trilogy to be called Dream Craft in its third instalment, going even deeper into the question of the onto-epistemologies that Wxtch Craft and Earth Craft were speaking to. However, the third instalment never happened in the art school. But instead, I was asked to curate a full day conference in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. And that's how I met Mala, because I invited Mala to the Collective Dream Weavers program, which was in 2023, I believe. And ever since I've been learning from Mala, we have been talking, exchanging.

In the meantime, I was also asked to curate a series of programs for an art space called CARA, Center of Art Research in Alliances in New York. Themed around, revolving around the question, ‘how to dream not only about ourselves’, meaning how to dream beyond the self, no? Like also de-subjectivising this notion of dreaming and seeing it as a way to enter into a communication with a more than human world. This question was taken from Davi Kopenawa, a Yanomami elder philosopher activist from the Amazonian realm of dreaming, let's say. Yeah. He has very many fascinating things to say about dreaming.

And after this program, I was still hungry for more to learn and to go more deeply also into my own roots and lineages in Mexico. Mexico being a very rich dreaming culture, let's say that. There are like 68 Indigenous peoples, and all of them work with dreams in some form. But in very many expanded forms beyond the, let's say, our more occidental like Western understandings of it. And then I got, quite recently, a curator/critics stipendium of the Mondriaan Foundation to continue researching Dream Craft. And it's called Dream Craft. And under this tag, under this name, I've been developing all kinds of projects and also, amongst which, to travelling dream residencies in Mexico with a group of dreamers, and I just came back from that. So that's my very short introduction on the dreaming.

MALA

My name is Mala Kline and I've been a choreographer long before a performer and a dancer. And then I studied philosophy and competitive literature and I was always interested in mythologies and different religions and a lot of literature basically. And I've dreamed really intensively from childhood on. And that was also my performative practice, but I wasn't so aware of these methodologies. Actually, I think in 2009, when I was on an artistic residency in New York, I actually ended up in the apartment of the person who then later became my teacher. This was Catherine Shainberg. And she basically was a successor of a Jewish mysticism, Jewish mystic tradition, which is called the Kabbalah of Light. And it was basically like a remembering. So, I knew that I was doing this work before, and so I started to study in this school, but it was more like a remembering of the work that I have done before, and of the work I knew before. And then I was studying at the Masters in Amsterdam, then it was called the DAS Arts. And I was actually creating a translation of methodologies of this inner work with dreaming. With inner imagery. With dreams. And translating this ancient methods into the work in performing arts. And then I actually started the PhD. And I did the whole PhD research in Brussels in a centre that at that time was called a.pass, because they offered me a three-year residency. I became one of the main teachers at the school in New York that teaches these practices of dreaming. And I made a big pause.

I went for a trip that at time, it was to New Zealand. It was like making a vision quest journey alone for months. And I basically had a dream. And that dream was not just a revelation, which normally the dreams are, but it was a real visitation of a real place that was back in Slovenia. That then I later bought and turned it into a hub for dreaming. Into a residency space for artists. Into what is now becoming a self-sustainable farm. And where all kinds of dreaming are researched and taught. So, this is what we continue to build up until today. And there I run a lot of courses, workshops, onsite, online, so that people can actually come and study and research and work on applying this work with dreams to their art or to their research methods or scientific methods. It's always something else.

ERIKA

I would propose to start with remembering, maybe. Also, like this re-member, of becoming a member again of a dreaming community and what that means. And maybe also members of the body, the dreaming body. How to create bodies with organs, without organs in the dream field? Maybe that could be an interesting one, right? What do you think?

MALA

Yeah, I think it's a beautiful question because I think that that there's many ancient traditions actually, that still exist, that actually work in the dream time, in the dream space and work with the dream fields. So, this isn't a materialized reality, it's just a space, basically. Non-space-space. And some people call it astral realm. Some people call it akashic records. I think actually it has a name in each tradition. It's always a different name. But basically, it's a space where all these images are. So, it's like a separate realm that in a way, by vibration, precedes the material manifested realm. And all these techniques, and there may be different techniques, but especially all the dreaming techniques are in continuous interaction with this realm. We call them the dream fields. And it's interesting because many things can be done in this realm. Not only that, in the dream time and while we are dreaming, we are in that space. Part of us, it's always in this space, even in the waking time. It's just that we were so focused on this reality, that we don't really pay attention to it, because we're so engaged in managing and getting ourselves through this dense reality that we have created. And usually all the, not just Shaman, but the people, the ancients, they, in a way, they were able to co-exist in the both places at the same time. So, in the dream realm and in the physical embodiment. And operate in reality, through the knowledge of the dream realm, then applied into the physical space.

We all have capacity to see through employment of the imagination. Because imagination is not the capacity in the brain, it's the ability to see the energetic realm in a way. And we're all able to remember all these different knowledges that we have experienced as a consciousness born in other lifetimes. And the work that we have done, and the knowledge that we have acquired. This is all possible to remember because they all still exists. Because in that space there is no time like we know it in a physical realm. The thing is to learn the techniques that actually enable you to interact with that reality, and source in it. Source for knowledge. Source for direction. Source for your intention. Source for your purpose, right? Everything is in a way already present there. All the potential and all the memory of the universe in a way, right?

What basically starts to happen is that if you work in the right and an aligned way for the good and for and towards life, right? It's gonna basically bring you to remembering in a way, you know, bringing together the members of yourself. So, your future selves, your potential selves, your alternative selves in other realities, your past selves. So, lots of remembering will be happening, and that is for a reason. Because something in you, in a way is tending towards wholeness, intentionally or unintentionally.

TRANSITION SOUND: Birds. [Field recordings from Mala Kline]. (11:56)

ERIKA

Yeah, I'm thinking there are many places that I could go into. Maybe this idea of the dream field as a separate realm. Or let's say, not a separate realm, but like a realm prior to this, you know, materialized reality. In a way it's been, of course like yeah, popularized. And I know the Aboriginal Dreamtime, but you will see that, indeed in many other, even in like Terano, this world was dreamed into existence by a dream of God. So, in a way, yeah, what is this ‘no time’, this ‘no space and no time’ prior to this manifestation. This manifested world. And it's interesting to see, no? Also, if you look at different like non-Western lineages or Indigenous lineages, you will see like the ‘no time’ in the dreaming is like ‘okay, the ancestors are co-present now and the future as well’. The future and the past ancestors are present with us in the moment that we're living right now. Or it can be indeed something like a spatial separation, right? Like a kind of real separate realm. Because according to some Indigenous lineages, it's actually, we're in a continuum. It's not so much a separate realm. It's rather that, this realm is completely interwoven in the landscape as we live it. In fact, it's allowing us to even enter, even more, into the fibres of existence, right? It's not that we're transcending ourselves in an almost like platonic way to another world, right? I think this is a really important nuance to make sometimes, depending on the cosmology.

And a very interesting way to trace that, and this is something that I learned from a really interesting workshop I did with an anthropologist called Federica Rainelli just now when I was in Mexico, she called it oníroteorías. And just with a few questions you can already trace, like, ‘okay, what do your simple statements say about how you conceive dreams within reality?’ You know? Or how do you structure reality? How do you separate these realms? So, for instance, if you ask like, where do dreams come from? Do they come from the brain? Do they come from the body? Do they come from indeed this other, prior time, do they come? Where do they come from? And also, because in the previous episode, the guests were talking about like dreams come mostly from the body. This is a very like, I think, interesting point also to talk no? In relation to remembering, no? Remembering becoming a dream body. What does that mean?

According to certain lineages, dreams don't come from the body. They come really from elsewhere. It's really like almost this divine message that comes through from an otherness with a big O, no? It should be like that. This is the way how this meaningful other, whether it's mountain, a river, or spirit, lets itself known what it wants and how it wants to enter into a kind of negotiation.

But there's of course, many kind of dreams now. Like also the Islamic, certain traditions make a differentiation between the heavenly dreams, the bodily dreams, the ones that come from our own concerns. I think there's an important distinction to be made as well, and it can be a really interesting kind of, litmus test. Are we able to accept that sometimes dream can really come from somewhere else? Can we not take that on as a metaphor, but as a reality, you know? It is maybe a spirit that is talking to you, but maybe we find this so scary even, or unimaginable, we have, so much, forgotten about this possibility that actual like river spirits or plant spirits or whatever spirits can exist. That we just cannot allow this possibility within our frame of mind, or else we will not be taken serious by an academic or even artistic community, right? So, I think it's kind of interesting to see, what are the edges of what the dreams are lighting up? Of our knowledge.

MALA

Yeah.

ERIKA

Of what we deem our knowledge systems. And that's also exactly why dreaming is so interesting. It will just break open everything that we thought was self-evident. Or frames that we thought were a frame of reality, right? It will create spaciousness where…or maybe how with this dream logic that also has been discussed in this podcast, right? I think that's the promising part of dreaming. That said, as Mala as you said, it' also the question is, ‘are you working for the good? For, what are you working for? With what purpose are you guiding yourself into this dream field? Are you navigating it?’ Yeah.

MALA

Yeah. I think what's very interesting is, you know, the word separation, because what my experience is, is that simply it's the consciousness unfolding. And it's unfolding through the dreams. And it may be a mountain dreaming, it may be a human dreaming, it may be a body dream, it may be a fantasy. It's just consciousness in its different forms or expressions or ways of experiencing itself. And it's one weaving matrix, weaving itself from within. Maybe it's imminent, maybe it's transcendent, but this is already language, right? So, is it the mountain? Is it the body? Like, this is all language.

TRANSITION SOUND: Birds. [Field recordings from Mala Kline]. (17:32)

ERIKA

I was recently in Mexico with a group of dreamers, and through one of the artists who had close next of kin living in the Sierra Otomi in the area that's northeast of Mexico City. And there is an Indigenous group that uses a form of dream technology, you could say. By now, dreams in Mexico, they have a very expanded idea, no? Obviously, it's anything beyond baseline is already called el complejo onirico. Before it was called altered states of mind, but this obviously got very co-opted by this whole psychedelic revolution. It's not only plant induced or whatever, it's really like visions and so on and so on. Anyways, the dreaming is used as a way to talk with, or to really negotiate with the spirits, let's say, of the underworld. Which is not like our Christian notions of the devil. I think we really have to nuance that because obviously missionaries came to this area and we're very quick to judge that like, ‘oh, this is witchcraft, this is a very harmful, like talking with the devil, you should never talk to the devil. This is a Faust’s impact, and look what happened with Faust. This is absolutely to be avoided!’. And I think, it's so special to see that despite all this colonization and waves of missionaries, this dream technology persisted. In which literally they built a feast. They feed these spirits that are bound to, they live in el monte, in the mountain. They are part of this land, and it's their territory. They belong there. You are just a visitor. And this is very, very important to keep in mind that they don't live in, per se, disenchanted world as we are. Maybe like here, that we have forgotten, and now we have to remember like the lineage has been up to now, unbroken. It's in danger. It's also suffering. Epistemicide in a way. No?

MALA

Yeah.

ERIKA

Through, for many reasons, like migration, addiction and so on. So, transmission is being lost, nonetheless. Ok, there's a real negotiation with the darker realms. That said, there's a real clear distinction as well between those who work for the good and those who work for the bad. Like self-interest is obviously, you're using the dreaming, the dream technologies, your capacity to negotiate with these different realms, with these different entities for self-interest or to harm, and that makes the big difference. No? And interestingly, they will call those brujo. So then again, you're in this kind of, ‘oh, the witch is bad’, you know? But at the same time, we are talking about these kind of methodologies, also other forms of methodologies. I think it's interesting to see how this play, you know, between good, bad, light, dark. At some point it doesn't matter in a way, and there's also a play with it. It's not completely gone either. What you think about that Mala?

MALA

Yeah, I think this is a very relevant remark because there's a lot of abuse of techniques. And often what happens is that the shadow takes over. And people can't distinguish. They don't even know that they're doing it for the power and they're not doing it for the alignment, or for the natural order, or for the healing, or for whatever it is, right? I think it's very interesting, this shadow, dark, light, this whole separation that I think we, Westerns actually brought in. I don't think that this was so intense before, but the Enlightenment, and the Christianity actually brought this in. I'm not so busy with it actually, because, you know, I always work with singular cases, with singular dreams and I attend to them as cosmic events, you know? So they are always events, and they can't be judged really one way or another. And on the other hand, the techniques, the methodologies, the software methodologies I work with, actually don't work with light, and don't work with darkness, they work with the light of consciousness. It's the light of awareness. So, this isn't the light we have a concept of, or the dark we have a concept for, it simply the luminosity. Even the Buddhists speak about this, right? So, emptiness is luminous and void, right? So, this is the consciousness, it's the basic nature of things, right? It's the same thing, really. And it cannot be put in a box in a way because it's in the third space, beyond the dual, that is characteristic for our mind and for our dual world, in which we live as incarnated beings, right? And it is a dual world. Because we're all split in two, right? We're two mirror images. The body is a mirror image, up, down, left, right, back and so on, right? So, this is a condition, but in this duality, we can exist in the space beyond, right? And this doesn't mean transcendence. It can be an imminent space of consciousness within this world, that is beyond, right? So how to exist in this space of duality but not being caught by it, is one of the big questions that you are immediately gonna encounter when you work with the dreaming. Because dreaming is kind of always inviting you there with all that it's communicating, right? What is needed, right? What the land needs, what the community needs. If somebody's sick in a community, right, and the community dreams for this sick person, somebody's gonna receive a dream. And we already see, right, in this, that we are in the beyond. It's not, this is the individual and we are the community. What I'm trying to do actually with the place that we are establishing and holding in Elias, is to keep the space open for this third space to exist, right? So that people can come and align with the potential they need to enter into, or repair whatever they need to repair, or meet in another space where they cannot meet otherwise and so on, right? So, if we have an intent, I think this is the intent actually.

TRANSITION SOUND: Birds. [Field recordings from Mala Kline]. (24:45)

ERIKA

Yeah, there are many things I wanna like respond to, talking about that we are made of duality, we're split in two. And there's also like the plane of imminence. I was walking with the group of dreamers in Mexico City in Museo Nacional de Antropologíain Mexico City. Highly recommended museum. Which is actually like a museum full of pre-Hispanic dream images. Like all these statues, they are like speaking to the dream field that basically that we were talking about, consists a basis of reality and it's interesting. We were having this really incredible guided tour by an anthropologist Johannes Neurath, who mischievously with this trickster spirit, who was also speaking, was turning upside down all the numbers. So, saying like how in from many pre-Hispanic Matsigenka cultures, the number 1 was actually the number of the devil. You don't wanna be like too much 1. There has to be a multiplicity. It's actually good, it's an advantage to be a body multiple, right? That's why you'll see a lot of depictions of like a jaguar claw with like a Quetzalcoatl head, you know, and then suddenly a snake skirt. The whole idea is kind of having these partial mutations, transformations of the body. And the whole idea is that you control, actually, there's always an excess of dreaming happening. Excess of dreaming, meaning an excess of transformation.

So, what actually proves you to be a good shaman or curandero, yeah, they call it now an anthropology, ritual expert, by lack of better words, is to actually know how to contain this dreaming. Also, when you're being challenged and tempted and, yeah? And every like Indigenous community has their own like, ways of reading this. In some it will look like that. Or with Wixarika, for instance, with the ritual, you should never like, eat if something is offered you in a dream, for instance. Anyways, that might be coded case by case, and depending on the landscapes and the people.

But it's interesting to see, no? That it's not about like duality in fact, the idea of making yourself double, the idea of the double is an incredibly multiplication also of power, no? You'll see all these demons or these creatures with two heads also as a way, like I'm a monster, but I also have a lot of power as well. You know how interesting this was to see it, also really within the light of an incredible multiplicity and also potentiality, you know? Because you were talking about like how Elias is also a place to enter into potential. And it has been also discussed in the podcast before, like the connection with quantum fields. And what it means to be kind of riding these waves of potentiality, in a state of super position, about like how to protect lineages in a way. Also, what you were talking like, it's not to be judgmental or territorial in that sense, not territorial in that sense. We do, of course, our territory in the sense of like we dream with the territory. But yeah, even these peoples will not tell you exactly how they're doing it.

And even then, if we come from abroad and we wanna learn these lineages, we have to have like a very acute sense that we entering a different realm and another land. That we're learning. And that it's also a very great possibility, that it's very likely, that we will not be able to access the full knowledge. This is also a Western illusion, that we will know everything and that we will see through it, and then we'll just own it and then we can play and toy with it and maybe create a fire on the go. Because we have not built in protections because we have not heated certain spirits, let's call it that. Or ask for certain permissions or, yeah, been tried and trusted through the process. There are really real initiation moments and techniques, let's say rituals, that are there for a reason as well.

MALA

Yeah. It makes me think of another thing actually. So, in the Saphire® tradition, it's not about controlling a power. Never. It's not about this, right? It's more about multiplicity in the sense of, expanding consciousness by having all these experiences of becoming other, of dreams, of reversals of dreams, of morphologically entering other forms and so on, right? But it's really about expansion of consciousness and about always aligning with the natural order of the world. As if everything has a blueprint. Whatever form exists, whatever phenomena exists, whatever entity exists, it has its blueprint. As if it's in ensouled or animated if you want. And sometimes it goes off for reasons, right? And basically, the work is simply to align things back to their natural order, and it's not to have ever a power over something, or over someone, or over some force or something. There's gonna be exorcism, for example, happening, yes. Sometimes this is necessary, right? Because the beings get out of order and sometimes some assistance is needed. But normally it's always about alignment with the source, right? And source is one, in a way, right? So, this is interesting, right? We got, it's one, but it's this one consciousness, right? Which is multiple in a sense, right? It is multiple, and it is one, at the same time. There's no paradox in this, and yet it is a constantly lived paradox.

And I think this is why you have the commandment in the 10 sayings. It's do not make yourself the divided image, right? It's really interesting because it's the start of, as it called, monotheism, right? On, if we call it like this, right? Because before there was the multiplicity, it was elohim, the multiplicity that created the world, the source of powers created all these forms, and is creating these forms continuously. Because it's all meant in the present time. But at the same time, there is oneness recognized in the multiplicity, right? I think that really the way it went into it becoming the one God, and everything worshiped like that, It really went off because the core knowledges, the esoteric knowledges of these traditions actually speak of oneness in the multiplicity. And how we can work with that, with that oneness in that state? And with aligning with the knowledge that is in it, right? As if the world, the consciousness knows exactly what the inner order is, right? But things get misaligned right in this world.

ERIKA

Yeah, it's interesting. No, it's also like, and I follow you completely and I also see how historically the notion of natural order has also been abused in that sense. For power to have power over, even like, very harmful ecological projects, under the guise of rewilding. Using this idea of like, no, it's the natural order. It's like if actually all these Indigenous people leave the land, and we make this into a very naturally orderly Western Styles National Park, and it's just very interesting. Again, this game, language game, that allows for power grabs with certain concepts and then go and run with them. Yeah, exactly. To appropriate them and so on.

I was curating this lecture series on all the manifestations of the witch, contemporary, historically, like also queer and so on. And then I wrote to Isabelle Stengers, who I regard like a bruja mayor! Which, I mean this is like, she has this incredible book also, capitalism as a form of sorcery [Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell], a really fantastic book. And I got this really grumpy answer back being like, ‘I'm really distrustful of artists just appropriating concepts unthinkingly and making that into their kind of artwork’. Anyways, she was really like ‘no artist, no bad, bad, bad, like experiences’. Anyways, I always circle back to her work, you know? It is like from cosmo-politics and the necessity to, you know, approach every like phenomenon and every dream, therefore, on its own terms, no? Every phenomenon, every people, every encounter.

That if we really are not to have power over each other, but power with to quote Starhawk, then we have to take each other on its own terms. And that requires a lot of like work and putting between the question like no brackets and not assuming too much. And it's difficult because sometimes our sensitivities surrounding gender and so on, maybe rub the wrong way, especially when we do have a very wild encounter with peoples and places that are so far away from your own frame of references. And this is exactly what makes it so promising and interesting. So, in a way, every encounter with a dream is like that. It's like the, what you said, the jolt of being pierced by an image. And having a rupture almost, or a moment of realization. A cosmic download or what you will. It was just very funny that Isabelle Stengers is also talking about the forms of animism. This idea that actually things could, and not beyond a metaphor, it's not a metaphor. It actually, they can have this dream body. Not only humans dream, everything dreams. And therefore we can meet each other in the dreaming. This is something that I also learned from someone else in Mexico that he said, yeah, the Tarahumara in the northern part of Mexico. That's how they know what the rock, and what a vengeful star actually wants from you, because the star also dreams. It's like it's not a soul human factor, right?

MALA

Yeah, no, but I think it's really great because art is, is true. It's very porous, it has very porous boundaries. And I had numerous cases, people that walked in and did one workshop and then got fascinated by the techniques, and how images move people and how easy this is, and then went off to do work with people using these techniques and when not properly trained, it can be actually really dangerous. And when it’s tackled only to promote yourself, and to gain success, or to use an interesting technique and appropriated for your own means, it can trigger all sorts of things. And it just made me really think of, you know, that in the old days, there was always this apprenticeship, right? So, you had to study with someone for a long time, right? You had to be an apprentice. You had to go through…because it's tricky, right? I get the tools; I can start to be very…I can start to feel the power, actually. I can manifest things, right? I can move people, right? People feel the power and then it becomes very tricky, and they can really fall very deeply into their shadow. And I have seen this thing happen and it just made me think, you know, how important really a proper training is when you are really working with these things. The question is, do you do the work properly?

TRANSITION SOUND: Birds. [Field recordings from Mala Kline]. (37:12)

ERIKA

It gives me again, to think that all these, like let's say ritual technologies, dream technologies are there for a reason. There are very designated moments to open a portal and to close it again. Or else, I know we're always dreaming, and it's one of the premises, of course. Dreaming is everywhere. And at the same time, it's also very necessary to open space and close it again. And sometimes also, space needs to stay concentrated. It can actually be a huge like disturbance if some people come in and out, and the other person is going through like the deepest process ever. But yeah, then we have to contain it.

Also, what I often make a big point of, taking care of the group, taking care of the space means also that in a contained way, you can create like very punctual moments, almost like acupunctures, in fact. People can stay also with the trouble, with the difficulty of an image that can be extremely hard or even heartbreaking. How can you safeguard that this work will enter into transformation? Not that we can like mechanically always guarantee it- Ah, that's again a very like Western way of thinking, like, ‘I'm coming for my transformation and if you don't deliver. I'll get angry. I want my money back’, you know? I mean, there's always this risk factor in involved, that we are endangering ourselves wilfully, consentfully, up to a certain point. And there's also a responsibility for me as a facilitator of systemic constellations and dream work. And you of course, with the school of images and your lineages. I think there's definitely like a lot to think of, like, ‘okay, what are the containers to hold this complexity, multiplicity, sometimes also conflict, sometimes dissenting voices’. And that's also why some certain information will only be given when you're ready.

Then of course, also in the West, this notion of apprenticeship. There's a big longing for apprenticeship. We've been so much now forced into other forms, like educational systems that this notion of apprenticeship doesn't even exist. But there is a longing, so people do seek it out. But yeah, I think it has been abused as well, our longing for apprenticeship. That I will grab power by telling you when you are ready to receive certain information, and hold this carrot up, up, up until you go crazy, you know? So, that this is also maybe like the part where important of lineages is important. It's a bit circular reasoning, but yeah. And then a lineage that is alive that can correct itself that is not like, obviously run by one single person. In an autocratic way. We've seen also those abuses. So yeah, talking again, whole living tradition as like an ecology of practices that can self-correct as well. Can correct each other. Keep each other in check. Hold accountable when necessary.

MALA

I totally agree. I think that, you know, it doesn't have to be one authority at all, but it does really help if one walks the way that people before have walked already. Because there's gonna be a lot of challenges when you really decide for a way, right? And that's why I think things like supervision, working with someone, having checkups are very, very important. And often it's not enough to just be thinking we're equals and we can hold each other the mirror.

ERIKA

Yeah.

MALA

Yeah, we can. I think it's absolutely necessary. But it's important to have someone that's a step before you, because there's gonna be really things like, the shadow will take over and then you are in the most vulnerable space, because you think you get it.

ERIKA

Yeah.

MALA

Because you think for a moment that you know. And it's such a vulnerable space capitalism has brought. It's like a menu, you can take this, you can take that, and it's so much confusion and they get you the most when you're the most vulnerable. When you have a moment of doubt or a moment of resentment, you get inserted something from somewhere, this, and you haven't even noticed it, and you think it's your choice. And we're very fragile when we're in this kind of processes of undoing, and you need to undo progressively, because otherwise you can open a Pandora box with an image and all chaos is let loose. It needs a heightened responsibility about what you're doing and so on, right? But today, you know, everything can be bought, right? You can just pay for a breath work, you can pay for this, you can pay for that. So, it's so much confusion, that it's actually very difficult to stay. You know, maybe for a moment you have felt like, wow, this feels right, right? But then in the next moment, something else is tempting so much and you already deviate, and so…

ERIKA

No, absolutely. And when you enter into this kind of dreaming community, as I've experienced with you, but also of course, like the group processes that I curate, facilitate, you enter into a cauldron basically together. And then to not fall into this, like, ‘oh, it's a Mexican art week. I need to network and see that’. And instead of going like into the field, to really find that focus and presence to stay with you, and whatever is trying to manifest itself within you and the group. I think it's also kind of interesting to see, like if you go that deep, it means that you go to a place sometimes deep within yourself and you will not be reachable. You will not be available for others.

There are many like dream activists that talk about this. Are you able to kind of stop that? Like grind and reclaim dream space? In a very like radical place for yourself. I also think like, and that's sort of part of my dream activism as well, that space, there's like this interiority, you know, the, the kind of inner life. We're constantly pulled outside of ourselves through social media, through this kind of carousel of like distractions, clogging basically the dream channels. It's like a night sky where you don't see the lights anymore because there's so much artificial light, like chaos lamps beaming into it. I think there is all of that. Of being attuned and sensitive to all that kind of information that does come through when you start to read and open, not only the dreams themselves, but also read this, open it like a dream, or any image and so on. And in that sense, also, it's been very interesting also to listen to how image has been working, or has been used as well as a conduit in certain Indigenous cultures, as a way of like, the image is always about to take you. It's almost like predating you. It's almost too powerful. It should be made less powerful, whereas Western art is like really trying very hard to create an image that is as powerful as an archetype. Everybody wants to make a tarot that is as powerful as the tarot, and yet we don't manage, and there it's the other way around. We're like, you have to soften the image because the image might really grab you by the guts or whatever. So anyways, just this also a little note on images because I also know it's been a concern in this series, on the power of the image and the dream image, specifically.

MALA

Just to respond to the image thing, right? So, the way we work with them in the self, it's also like you are looking at the intent, not necessarily the power, again now, of the image, but the intention, like there's a will in the image. The will is already intending something in the dream, right? In the dream realm. And so, it's more like a network of intentions, of willing, in a way, the way this matrix is unfolding, it's this, I think this is very interesting. And then what I wanted to say also before is that in some way, this work is gonna undo you. If you don't go for power, or for control, or for what I can do with this, I don't know, like different things. It will stimulate your creativity because you're becoming one with this creative force that is unfolding through you and wanting to manifest certain things through you. And so, what slowly begins to happen through the work is that in some way you are becoming this multiplicity, right? So, these images, all these others, right? All these unfolding, and it's called the Adam Kadmon. It's the primordial consciousness. It's like all the images, all the forms that ever were right, cosmically, you know, perceived created, thought, generated, right? To expand your consciousness to the edges of the universe if you want, right? That's kind of the capitalistic idea. And what this work is gonna do is it's slowly gonna erode your ego, right? This grid right, of your personality. And you're slowly gonna emerge out of this process as a field. And when you become the field, and there's many thresholds to walk, right? That's why I said it's so tricky, right? That it's very good to have a path that people just in front of you hold for you. Because to become a field, then it's somehow very different. The perception changes, right? It's like that expanded consciousness that can see before and after, and into people, and feel deeply, and be clairvoyant, and declare sentient, and all sorts of things arise from that. They're not the point. The cities are never the point, the special powers, they're never the point. They're never the fascination. They're just a consequence of your consciousness expanding. To become a field, right? And in the dreaming, another thing that's very important, is that it's fluid. Nothing actually is of substance. It's very Buddhist in this sense. It's empty inside. It has an intent, but it's impermanent. So, it's gonna change, and it's gonna change into something else, and into another form and into another form. It's like a constant, becoming a constant transformation. And in a way, it's simply allowing that that unfolding begins to happen through you, right? Without holding onto something or claiming something, right? Territory or body or form, or a position or a structure or anything, right? It's all about that, aligned and transformative unfolding, in a way, as a field.

MARTIN

Thank you Erika and Mala for this conversation. For the transcript of this episode and resources mentioned in the conversation, go to our website. The link for this page will also be in the podcast episode description, wherever you're listening right now. This podcast series is a Rose Choreographic School production. The series is produced and edited by Hester Cant, curated by Victoria Perez Royo with concept and direction by Martin Hargreaves and Izzy Galbraith. Thank you for listening. Goodbye.

Bibliography:

ERIKA AND MALA'S WORK:

Dream Craft - Erika Sprey

Wxtch Craft - Erika Sprey

Earth Craft - Erika Sprey

Dream Weavers programme - Erika Sprey

Zig Zag Reading Room - Erika Sprey

Elias - Mala Kline

Saphire® - Mala Kline

OTHER PEOPLE/COLLABORATORS:

Catherine Shainberg

Davi Kopenawa Yanomami

Dream Craft: Felizitas Stilleke, Laura Burns, Laura Valencia and Antonio Monroy

Faust

Federica Rainelli

Hopscotch Reading Room

Isabelle Stengers - Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell

Johannes Neurath

Matsigenka people

Starhawk

Tarahumara people

Wixarika, Huichol people

OTHER REFERENCES:

Aboriginal Dreamtime

Adam Kadmon

Curandero

Elohim

Enlightenment

Kabbalah of Light

Pandora's Box

Shamanism

Terano

INSTITUTIONS:

a.pass

CARA

DAS Arts

Mondriaan Foundation

Museo Nacional de Antropología

Stedelijk Museum