Dream Delivery Service

The Dream Delivery Service takes subscribers and writes and delivers dreams to their doors every day for one month. Subscribers within a four-mile radius of Understudy will receive dreams delivered by bike before dawn; subscribers outside of the radius will receive dreams by mail. Artist Mathias Svalina writes and delivers all dreams. The Understudy space will feature interactive and collaborative dreaming and biking events.

With the Dream Delivery Service, Svalina writes & delivers dreams to subscribers every day for a month. To nearby subscribers, Svalina hand-delivers the dreams—brief surrealist narratives he writes & encloses in small pink envelopes–to their doors, biking through the empty streets of Denver before dawn.

Svalina started the Dream Delivery Service 2014, hoping to devise a new sort of relationship with a reader, a new kind of reading intimacy. In addition to his delivery service, throughout November Svalina will meet visitors & transcribe their dreams to collect in The Big Book of Denver Dreams, & host events of embodied dream-logic in the Understudy space, bringing the personal framework of the dream into social settings.

This installation will occupy the space throughout November and features the following special events at Understudy (890 C 14th Street):

11/16, 6:30-8:30pm ——— The Denver Dream-In: Open-Mike Storytelling for Dreams

A house that’s your childhood home but also a treehouse filled with sleepy hyenas, scuba diving through a wrecked train with The Rock, & the inevitable cascade of teeth falling out: tell us your dreams at The Denver Dream-In!

The Dream-In is an open-mike storytelling event for dreams, a night to tell your weirdest, most memorable, most mystifying dreams to an appreciate audience. It is a celebration of the narrative power of the illogical, the wisdom of the absurd, & the primeval fears of taking that test for which you never studied.

You can sign up in advance or at the event to tell your dreams. In preparation, think about the dream & how to tell the fullest version of it. Recall the sense details & concrete details. Recall the precise complexities of the dream’s emotions. Keep it under ten minutes & keep it PG-ish.

Some people glaze over when you tell them your dreams. We are not those people.

11/21, 6:30-8:30pm ——— DREAMEANING: A Night of Collaborative Dream Divination

Like speed-dating for dreams, like a social cartography of the unconscious, like a nest of knotting images, DREAMEANING asks you to offer your weirdest dreams up to a room of amateur interpreters. Join us for this joyous celebration of the weird things our brains do.

Come with a dream in mind to share with kind strangers. Bring that dream, your interpretive prowess, & a healthy sense of wonder. Expect a bit of chance absurdity along the way.

11/30, 6:30-8:30 ———— The Dream Feast

Join us for a buffet of phantasmagorical, visionary, & absurd foods to celebrate the closing of the Dream Delivery Service’s residency at Understudy. The feast will feature foods to nourish the mind’s ridiculous innovations. Food to upturn food. Food embodying the logic of dreams.

We will provide the center dish & side dishes: Slow-Roasted Iconography, Baked Fog, Lost Cat Poster Soup, & Watch-Kabobs Garnished with Debt.

Beyond that, the feast is a potluck of dreams. We invite you to fix a dream recipe.

• The recipe could be some food you once dreamed, or that you dream up in prophetic silliness.
• The recipe could use titles or inspiration from Salvador Dali’s cookbook such as The Tripe of Yesteryear, Bush of Crayfish in Viking Herbs, or Salad Composed according to Alexandre Dumas.
• The recipe could come from those generated by AI neural networks Janelle Shane created (lewisandquark.tumblr.com) such as Whole Chicken Cookies, Chrest Chunch Pecan Pie with Pistachio, Cherry Fruit with Doven Rolls, Crockpot Cold Water, & everyone’s favorite seasonal classic: Beasy Mist.

Many dream dishes are not for eating. Don’t come hungry. Though edible beverages & light snacks from the waking world will be available.

This event is the closing party for the Dream Deliver Service’s November residency at Understudy.

Understudy is located at the Colorado Convention Center / Theatre District light rail stop near 14th and Stout. Look for the B-Cycle station next to the light rail tracks or Shantell Martin’s art bench.