Dream and tell: How a boat became an oneiric museum.
There used to be a dream-collecting lady on a quirky sailboat in East London.
True story, none of it a dream.
Ondine, the aptly named, elegant vessel, is moored alongside the Regent’s canal towpath by Victoria Park. It’s summer 2018
I meet Lucie and she invites me onboard. A sign above the cabin entrance says Museum.
Upon entering, I see a sculpture of feet, half-painted in yellow. I see dashboard switches marked “Lucidity”, “REM”, “Awake”. I see a typewriter and a passport of the International Dream State. Lucie smiles. She asks me whether I’d like to contribute my latest dream to the Archive, but for the life of me I can’t remember any dream at all.
That’s fine says Lucie. Fancy reading other people’s dreams? A stack of papers, some handwritten, some printed, some typed ( I‘m guessing on the typewriter in the cabin), lie neatly on a shelf.
I sit on the sunny cockpit, summer breeze and sparkling water surrounding me and start reading. Dreams are such strange things. I recognise patterns I’ve encountered too and weirdly vague, dreamy memories spring to mind. The power of the Archive I suppose.
Lucie Treacher started the International Archive of Dreams along with three companions ( Catalin Philip, Josie Malinowski and Ruby Revell) as her dissertation at Durham University. She’s a musician and an artist. The idea was to invite people onboard to share dreams, talk about them and inspire Lucie and her collaborators to create tangible objects and mise en scenes inspired by them. The dreams and objects would then be archived and eventually form a museum.
Ondine, the sailboat acts as the main venue and the Museum of the Archive. A pop-up museum really, it is meant to go on for a year or so, until the project’s completion. A permanent venue might follow conditions permitting. I ask Lucie what will happen to the boat? We’ll see, she replies.
Almost a year goes by. It’s now April 2019.
I write to Lucie to catch up and ask her if I could revisit, take some extra shots. We meet at her home, a narrowboat. close to where Ondine used to be. I just sold Ondine, she tells me. The project is so far completed. Lucie is moving on, to different ventures, music-related this time. The Archive is still alive though, in the form of a website and in the hope of finding a suitable roof for the future. Ondine, stripped of her dreams, lives by her new owners, up the canal.
Later, that day walking home at dusk, I’m sure I catch a glimpse of Ondine in the distance, sailing softly up the canal near Broadway Market. Some people are on board. Laughs are heard, music is playing. Balmy evening. A dream?
This story was shot in Junbe 2018 and May 2019. This post was published in January 2024
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