Winter Gathering: Entangled Dreaming
18.12.202514:00 - 18:00
LUCA Campus Ter Beken
Beekstraat 1-3, 9030 Ghent
The SIT-PLU Lab warmly welcomes you to our final activity of 2025 – a Winter Gathering around the Winter Solstice on Thursday 18 December from 14:00–19:00 at Campus Kasteel Ter Beken.
As we approach the shortest day and the longest night – a liminal, magical time when we sleep more and our bodies begin to hibernate – the dream space becomes more attuned. As we retreat into our cocoons, we reflect on where we have been and restore body and mind for the next cycle.
We invite you for an afternoon dedicated to surrendering to the darkness and tuning into collective dreaming. We will screen the short film La Partida de las Imágenes by Ana Edwards. Hovering between ethnography and reverie, the film enters the in-between spaces of the dreams of a Mapuche family in southern Chile, exploring human and other-than-human social cartographies of the territory.
Artist, researcher, and writer Marieke McKenna will present a lecture performance on lucid dreaming, cross-cultural perspectives on dreams, and the phenomenology of inner space: creative imagination. She will guide us through the spectrum of consciousness – from daydreaming and night dreaming to lucid dreaming, creative imagination, and altered and meditative states. Together, we will explore the concepts of inspiration and genius through the lens of cultivating a creative mind.
As dusk falls, we will follow the fading light and tune our senses into the darkness through a “winter sleep” score by Annelotte Lammertse and Juan Ducque. What does it truly mean to experience darkness – and the hope of the return of light?
To close the day, Marieke will guide us through a lucid dreaming DJ set.
What to bring: A mat for the collective dreaming session.
Sign up here.
Marieke McKenna (London, 1994) is an artist, researcher, writer, national radio host, and storyteller. She studied philosophy, history of science, astronomy, and religion at the Universities of Amsterdam, Glasgow, and Utrecht. Her award-winning research explores historical, cross-cultural, and philosophical perspectives on (lucid) dreaming and the phenomenology of consciousness.
Ana Edwards (Santiago, 1987) is a Chilean artist and filmmaker. In 2019 she did a MA in Visual Anthropology in the UK, and later Le Fresnoy Studio national des arts Contemporains in France.