Marina Abramovic’s “Dream Bed”

In her installation “Dream Bed,” artistMarina Abramovicnot only encourages audiences to touch her art, she asks them to lie right down inside it. The bed in question is more like a no-frills coffin. Where the pillow should be, there’s a snowflake obsidian crystal, which is supposed to prevent nightmares. Correspondent Sean Cole volunteered to climb in, but not before stepping into the required pajama gear: a puffy, feather-stuffed jumpsuit lined with magnets (which, Abramovic believes, promote blood flow to the brain), mittens, booties, muffler headphones, and 100 percent opaque glasses.

Abramovic says the exhibit isn’t the bed and jammies getup; it’s the dreams themselves. Whether you nod off completely or simply daydream, you’re participating in Abramovic’s vision. “I think the dream is like a small art piece,” she says. “In the dream, everything is possible. You can in one second be in Hong Kong and another second on the moon.” Abramovic asks participants to record their dreams as part of the performance.

“Dream Bed” is part of a larger community-oriented project: Abramovic built an entire dream house in Japan, in which people sleep overnight and record their dreams the next morning. Abramovic plans to collect fifty or sixty of these dream books and put together a public dream library. Do people’s dreams become more vivid and memorable after they’ve left the dream bed (or house) and returned to their own bunks? “Definitely, definitely!” says Abramovic.

(Originally aired: February 26, 2005)