Diary of Dreams

2001, XX1 Gallery, Warsaw

Adam Fijałkowski
(...)I imagined a rat, who had a pencil eraser instead of a nose (...) I was in a room that I had never seen before. It was an empty room with one window, in the middle of the room was a painter's ladder. I screwed a huge sheet of packing paper to the wall with four large screws. Then, using a sponge and paint I painted the entire surface with different colours. I remember that this totally absorbed me - I was completely concentrated on this task. I removed the sheet and placed it on the floor. As I looked at the "painting" it became obvious that it's a meadow, even though there was practically no green. I took the sponge, put it in clean water and began to rub out flower shapes.

Darek Maciejewski
I dreamt that the entire city was sleeping, that is the people, but me and my friends flew in the air with flashlights, which had transmitters, with which we could look into people's minds, which we did. But we didn't guess their dreams, instead turning them onto positive thinking. Kinda this timtirimtim.

Franciszek J. Pasko
Dream from 04.09 nr.1 For unknown reasons I was running around the cities of Poland with a second person. I can't precisely say who the other person was. Once it was my brother, another time a friend and still another time some stranger. I was in Radom, I think. It was dusk, while laughing histerically, we ran around (not tiring at all) through the streets and squares of the city. In front of the building that looked like a primary school, was a field and on it in the bushes a group of men drank moonshine priced at 3,45 PLN for 0,75l. We realised it's the field of the local football club and fearing an attack by hooligans we ran in the opposite direction. Unfortunately the boys heard us and asked, completely unexpectedly: "Hey, you! What's the best THEATER in Poland?" Well, we hadn't expected that. But being alert we answered: "Clearly, the one from Your town!" And it happened. The gang began, also laughing hysterically, to run after us. I don't know if it was to beat us up or to congratulate us. We ran clear away, jumping like madmen. We ran into some building, with them after us. We on the stairs, they too. Then we did something stupid: running away we ran into a 2x2m room. There seemed no escape route, when the boys ran in after us. We ran around the room and came out the entrance.
Dream from 04.09 nr 2 I am disproportionately big compared to the world, or the world is disproportionately small. In any case I live in this world and then fall into a huge crevasse, which looks like one out of a cartoon. Dream from 05.09 nr 1 This is a dream I had last night, but I want to describe it. The national football team, with the coach Mr. Engel at the helm, took part in an advertisement. No big deal, but they were on the beach advertising... sand. Yes, yes, sand and Emanuel Olisadebe was strolling on it in dress shoes, speaking Polish. Dream from 06.09 nr 2 I'm walking around on mountain tops. The mountains are intensely red and elastic, as though they were gelatin. I'm jumping around on this gelatinous, red mass, when suddenly a hole appears and I fall into it. Under the formed exterior layer, it's a liquid red mass that tastes of cherry. So I eat it to try and get out of this trap. I eat and eat and get ever fatter. I finish and it turns out I'm as bloated as a balloon and tied with string to some girls' hand. Suddenly I burst, covering everyone around me with sweet, cherry-flavoured gelatin.
Dream from 07.09 nr 1 I was a gladiator fighting in ancient Rome. I had just fought several bouts with Traks, Maurs and Greeks, all victorious. When I was to end my turn, a bull was let loose in the arena which attacked me with huge speed. I grabbed it by the head, so as to bring it down when I noticed that a plate of pyrogies is tied to its' back. This didn't seem odd. What seemed odd however, was that the spectators, instead of people, were frogs. The entire Colosseum was filled with frogs. When I tried resuming my fight with the bull, it turned out he had changed into a waiter holding a tray in hand. He served me pyrogies. I wanted to eat them, but when I sliced through one, houseflies flew out of it, just as from the rest of the pyrogies. The frogs in the stands jumped on the insects and the whole arena got covered in a green blanket of frogs. When the reptiles slowly began disappearing from the middle of the Colosseum, only two things remained on the sand: the bull's skeleton and my left leg running with blood.
Dream from 08.09 nr 2 I am sitting in the cockpit of some vehicle that I'm driving. It is a steamroller. And I am taking part in a race on a racetrack. There are about 20 vehicles. Each is moving with amazing speed, as though our vehicles didn't possess their actual mass. We're racing. The steamrollers collide, some more dangerous than others. And people in the stands are throwing spitballs at us. Oddly, the spitballs mark the lacquer finish of our vehicles. The finish line draws near. I come in third, or fourth, but it is me in the center of journalists' attention. I give intervies, flash bulbs go off. When I awoke, about a meter away a camera was lying in front of me, the lens barrel pointed at my face.

Janusz Ratecki
It was late afternoon, Poniatowski Park in Łódź. I was sitting with Magda on a normal bench, on one of those alleyways where you can hide from the whole world. Before us, in the final rays of a setting sun a small lake glitterred with a wall of green behind us, making us feel as though it could protect us from all the bad thing, which sometimes happen to us. We talked a long time, happy to be together. Sometimes someone with a dog walked by or an elderly couple with grandchildren, rushing home for supper. But the cold northern wind was wily. It rose from out of nowhere, leaves began to dance and delicate wrinkles appeared on the smooth surface of the lake. Magda stole a glance behind her, as though she wanted to see what was behind us. Two men ran to us from behind - we didn't manage to see their faces. One grabbed me by the neck and started choking, I couldn't make a move, he put the barrel of a gun to my head. The second threw a steel rope around Magda's neck and pulled it tight. After a minute, which was a whole eternity, Magda's head limply fell to her knees, a minute of her life remaining. And (as it should be before dying) she didn't see the most beautiful moments of her life, she didn't remember the moment of her brith, she didn't see the first smile on her mother's face, seen for the first time. With her head heavily resting on her knees, with eyes opened unnaturally wide and tears heavily flowing down her cheeks she stared. She saw a bullet explode her beloved's head, his face turn into a bloody, shapeless pulp.

Kasia Grodzicka
As usual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that just happen to fit. As usual lots of smells. Two of my friends. I was buying crepes for them in the basement of some vegetable store smelling of pickles and mildew. Like a regular customer, I got a free water with the crepes. I took them upstairs to the dining hall, done in wood veneer, all shiny and smelly from the polish and the burnt milk. At the tables covered in plastic tablecloths sat my friends busy in conversation. They didn't recognise me. There wasn't even room for me. I sat down by myself. Listening in on their conversations, I even laughed at a joke. At that moment all of them simultanously, in one studied, theatrical, synchronised gesture turned their heads in my direction. They looked at me with disgust. As though I were worse. More puzzles. My mom is knocking on the window yelling that she'll come get me and drive me home after work. She knocks louder, not knowing if I heard her. She yells even louder, punching the window with her fists. Suddenly I'm on the other side of the window and I see myself as though from above along many just like me, identical girls and a crowd of identical mothers. All are yelling at their children. Me and him are lying. Me on my stomach, his T-shirt has a zipper on the back. Slowly I undo it. On his body is a perfect copy of van Gogh's 'Sunflowers.' It doesn't seem strange. My finger rubs the sunflowers. They become lighter. Streaks give them light and you can't see how painful a picture it was to begin with. Now they appear unripe. Not a gram of age is in them.

Kasia Podlewska
Maybe we were all dreaming the same common dream? Krzysztof I was a housefly and I flew incessantly, until I flew myself to death. Then I was in fly heaven and I woke up and then fell back asleep. I was flying at night between the stars. They bounced off me like balls. Loud music reached me from somewhere, so I flew even higher, until I bounced off the ceiling. I was falling a long time, the music faded. But I heard the hum of moving cars. On Wednesday at two o'clock I met a cool girl through the window.

Robert Turek
Gathering Strength I'm in a friend's room. At my right side is a window, opposite me a bed. On the bed, on its hind paws stands a white cat. It's similar to a squirrel and a groundhog. The sun starts rising, comes from behind the clouds and when it appears whole as an orange ball, the cat suddenly begins making strange and quick moves with its' front paws around its' head, as though it was cleaning itself. In fact he was gathering strength, which he drew from the rising sun. Two more animals appeared - a hawk and a pigeon. The first couldn't spread it's wings, because there was no room. The hawk and the cat threw themselves at the poor pigeon and swallowed him one after another or together. Death on the photograph. A black-and-white photograph rests on the table. Two people are on it. One of them is a man, who was very bad. The other person was an innocent child. I raise the photograph and look at it. I know that something terrible can happen, I put it back down. When I raise it one more time, the man is killing the child and the child has some strange face, I immediately throw the photo away. When I raise it for a third time the child's head is off. I am sad. The man came from the USA. He got in a spaceship and esceped into space, nobody managed to catch him, despite checking the trajectory of his flight.

Łukasz Kowalski
I am a grey rectangular chest. Something has broken and I must get fixed. After the inspection, someone says that dreams aren't a recorder, for one reason or another. I woke up. The sound of the sea, maybe, outside. Large ships pass, sounding their horns. I realize that they're trams passing. A little later I fall asleep again. Something is happening, but I wake a moment too late. The dream that remained, couldn't be captured. I know that it was long and structured. It leaves. I'm falling asleep. Collecting pebbles on the beach. Must label them - which one lay where. After transport, they will each be put in the appropriate place. Each gets a tag. I'm writing calligraphy. I know this picture. I've seen it a thousand times. I'm in Wrocław. Łukasz takes me around the city; here's the market, the island, the library, and these windows - it's where professor Miodek lives. Ł. exclaims a weird vibrating "Miodek, how do you spell dick?" An armchair slides through the wall, with the professor on it. Sitting, he gives us a lecture on vulgarity. He conjugates through persons, tenses, declinates.

Little Małgosia
Joanna appearred in my dream. I saw her in a hospital room. Doctors were examinimg her with a tomograph. She lay terrified on a gurney covered with a bedsheet. Slowly rolling into the middle of the machine. Suddenly I found myself in the archive. I had in my hand a grey envelope signed with her name. Inside: DIAGNOSIS - COMPLETELY UNSUITED. ORDERS - SENTENCE TO SOLITUDE. I looked through the window. I saw them put her into a plastic jug.

Marek Fedorowicz
I'm in a field. Several people are with me. The field is not large: it's in the middle of the forest. Most likely we have to dig something out of it. It's warm, the sun is shining. I glance at the sky and see jets fly overhead. A moment later another one passes but what do I see - a giant fireball thrown from the plane widens vertically, touches the ground: makes a fiery paravan. A huge wall of fire stretches for several kilometers. Drops from the fireball fall to earth and grow into a fiery wall. The first flew far. When I saw the next, which this time was flying in my direction, I started to run. Drops fell nearly at my legs and grew into the wall. The next flew over. And the same thing hapenned. We were all separated by fire. I'm running down a country lane, everything around me is on fire.

Marta Detyn
I was on a trip somewhere - a camp or something, in mountains a little reminiscent of the Bieszczady, a little of the Alps. I was part of a special, 10-person group which had to cover the whole way on foot - others were driven up in tour buses. Everything was very secretive and our group had to perform a secret task. Everyone knew about this, but nobody spoke a word of it. All kinds of people were in this group, rather young, probably my friends, but I didn't speak to anyone in particular. We also had a slightly older guide, who reminded me of my high school teacher. Before we began the route we had to promise him that we would unconditionally trust him. The path was different - sometimes green foothills, sometimes dark, cold caverns, surging rivers, streams, stones and in all this wasn't interesting. The sleeping arrangements is what I liked more. The second night for example. A small village, a round plaza, huts around it - we slept in them. On one side three 'stalls', or maybe more. They all looked like beds with roofs. They looked like hindu pyres for burning corpses, like statues carried in Corpus Christi processions. Everything was richly decorated and colorful, it looked rather tacky actually. This image I remember very clearly, with all the details - I could even paint it. On the first 'stall' embalmed yellow-orange corpses covered in flowers lay. I stood right next to them, so I didn't see them fully. I looked at the far ones - on two of the next lay plastic figures of a crucified Christ - perfectly typical, except, both had a raised left hand and had no cross. They were covered in flowers - the plastic kind and many trinkets. On the fourth stall lay a child (roughly 10 to 12 years), naked, but I don't know whether a boy or a girl, it was seriously ill and some older woman was washing it's back. Further were more 'stalls', but I didn't see them up close. I stood a long time and stared at the colorful one. After a time that woman turned and said that I must go, because with my staring I profane the bodies of the dead and that they deserve respect.

Marta Siemaszko
I wonder what my dogs dream about? Because they have such cool facial expressions when they sleep. I was a small child, maybe six and I was sitting under a great, wonderful, wide-leafed tree. The weather was wonderful, a brilliant blue sky with lazy clouds passing on it. I was sitting on soft grass with my back against the tree and technically wasn't doing anything and time swam and swam and swam and flew by and I sat and sat and sat. I remember, I was very happy and calm. As though nothing bad could ever happen to me. Marta Sobolska I had a dream that lasted long, even though almost no time passed. I was a small animal with an eye at one end. A great big eye. I lived in a grey, stone hovel with a hallway, in which I lay, from which I stared with this eye. The hovel exit was covered with a matte, glass pane and from time to time I saw naked feet walking on it. That's how my life went by.

M.G.
I want to hug someone. I think I long for tender words. Why does the guy next to me have to sleep without his shirt? Now a whole herd is observing me. Rams. I wonder who's got the problem here - us or them? They think it's us who has the problem. What do they want from me? They don't see me. It's me doing the peeping now. When I observe people, especially those behind glass, I sometimes can't help myself. At the sight of someone from a toothpaste commercial I threw myself at the window and licked it. He stuck out his tongue at me, but got real embarassed. I like my current position. Even though every second is different - I'm comfortable in each one. I have this unstoppable urge to do some scratching, some lunging, some jumping around, like baby lions. Throw myself at these sleeping lazybones and have a pillow fight. The problem is that someone's got to start, to throw the first pillow. No, I can't do it. They really came here to rest. It's me who's the baby lion. I had some beautiful dreams. About a man, of course. But some shithead behind the window woke me out of it by yelling: Wakey-wakey!!!

Rafał
I didn't even feel it when I ended up in the harbour. It was warm, but cloudy. A light breeze blew. All around were people moving about, with faces I didn't see, I couldn't tell if they were a woman or a man. They were a homogenous, unrecognizable mass. I was turning around on the spot, until the moment when houseflies began to attack me. They elicited in me an avoidance response. I jumped into the water and began submersing myself in murky, sticky, port 'muck'.