IN FOCUS #9
A Cultural History of Dreams, with Hans Ulrich Reck
Thursday, 26 March 2026, 7-9 pm
▶ German Language event
INTRODUCTION
Rebekka Seubert, Curator of the exhibition
LECTURE
Hans Ulrich Reck (Art Historian, Author): Die Welt ein Traumgewebe? – The world as a tapestry of dreams?
The world as a tapestry of dreams? On the “oneiric” and its significance for the arts
Hans Ulrich Reck's lecture, given as part of the exhibition The Other Side of the Night, offers a generally comprehensible overview of an almost boundless, complex topic.
Particular attention is paid to several turning points in the cultural history of the “oneiric” and the role played by European Romanticism in this context. A distinction is made between night-time dreams and daydreams. The latter are particularly important for the utopian dimension of art. The lecture will also introduce selected theoretical models such as the dream philosophies of Sigmund Freud, Ernst Bloch and Georges Devereux.
Hans Ulrich Reck is an art historian and author who published the overview work Traum Enzyklopädie (Dream Encyclopedia, Verlag Wilhelm Fink, 2010) in 2010 and was professor of art history and rector of the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne until 2020. In addition to his teaching activities (until 2020), he is the author of numerous book publications on topics such as design theory, creativity, the aesthetics of ritual art, media art, art theory, and image philosophy.
On the subject of dreams, there is a whole semester's worth of lectures available online as audio recordings: “audiolectures 03 on the history of the arts in a media context” (online version of the 2009/10 winter semester lectures at the Academy of Media Arts on the subject of 'Dream images, imagination and interpretations. Moments in an Art and Cultural History of the “Oneiric”'; see since February 2010, https://www.khm.de/audiolectures/#audiolecture_03)
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