On the Art of (Un)Telling Dreams / Workshop with Iskandar Abdalla and Omar Kasmani

A blessed dream (ruʾyā) is a gift from God. When any of you sees a dream that gladdens the heart, let them share it with the hearts of those they love. But if one beholds a dream that weighs upon the soul, let them seek refuge in the Almighty and speak of it to no one –– so goes an Islamic prophetic tradition on dreams that distinguishes them according to the affect they engender and prescribes what is told, untold and to whom.

Such a view corresponds to the modern significance of dreams as condensed depositories of particular forms of truth; of knowledge about the self; the histories that shaped it and the present it is entangled with. If dreams are supposed to tell us something about (our) truth, can they also unsettle knowing, alter the ways of how we relate to space, time, ourselves and what we call home? What etiquettes and rituals of dreaming are known to us; what bonds of love and forms of companionship are required for sharing dreams; and how do the visions we receive become a force in waking life?

In this dialogue, two Berlin-based dreamers meditate upon the critically intimate and political dimensions of dreaming. They think across religion, queerness, and migration to explore how dreams relate to broader issues of belonging, in particular, our place in the world.

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