TRAUMSPEISEKAMMER

“I was 35 years old, when I woke up for the first time,” describes visual and performing artist Anne Glassner her state of consciousness, when she discovered she had Armenian roots.

After such an experience, what dreams may come, what memories do they hold? The new exhibition project Traumspeisekammer, developed together with theatre and film artist Gagik Arshák, invites such questions.

Anne Glassner grew up in a farmhouse in the Waldviertel, Lower Austria, while Gagik Arshák spent the summers of his early life in his grandparents’ countryside house in Abaran, Armenia. Both artists share memories of a chamber in the coolest, northernmost wing of their family homes used for storage and preservation of otherwise perishable food.
The simple turning of the chamber door knob evoke childhood memories that despite geographical and cultural distance were made of the same ingredients: The smell of the cow dung, the rooster call, the apricots, grandma’s lullabies, the evening breeze  whistling softly through the rooms, or the walks where „the asphalt ended and freedom began“. 

As a multi-sensory installation, the exhibition invites visitors to explore preserved dreams, memories in jars, drawers, and shelves. Armenian elements blur with Austrian ones, fragments of memories of real events with those of dreams. What is reality and what is fiction? Which experiences were lived and which are hidden in our unconscious, awakened by dreams?

In the rear exhibition space you can find the ‘oven’ represented by a bed. This is also the space where Anne Glassner’s dream residence will take place and where new dreams are ‘baked’ and ultimately preserved. Visitors are invited to bring their own memories and dreams and to explore forms of preservation together with the artists.

The opening performance sparked off the journey when the dreamer meets Karapet, a traditional folk figure that as a puppet since antiquity served both as the voice and mass media for Armenians in Anatolia.