Global Sleep or the Art of Sleeping in Public

We are vulnerable when we sleep. Sleeping is, by definition, a private act; perhaps the most private moments in life are spent sleeping. While asleep, one is mentally distant from everything around one. Sleeping means relinquishing control to one’s vegetative nervous system. We trust our bodies to continue breathing, to keep the heart pumping and to allow us to, eventually, wake up unscathed. We also hope that nothing dangerous occurs while we’re in this vulnerable state. For this reason, one tends to withdraw to a protected place to sleep, somewhere private, a safe place. Occasionally, sleepers leave their cosy nest to wander through public spaces (usually heading for the roof of some building). This is referred to as somnambulating, or sleepwalking. While a person is sleepwalking, that individual is not aware of what he (or she) is doing. People are sometimes exposed to dangerous situations while somnambulating in public areas without realising it.

Julia Neuenhausen, on the other hand, knows exactly what she’s doing when she lies down in any number of places to be photographed as a globally wandering sleepwalker.

This series was realised over a period of several years in a number of places in Europe and in Asia. The photographs feature the same woman, reclining on the ground, or on stairs, tables, paths or passageways. Most of these locations are anything but hospitable: cold, abandoned and unwelcoming, even surreal. This is the embodiment of concrete and imagined constructs of an urbanised environment that is, momentarily, devoid of life, utterly sterile.

In these pictures, the sleeping woman seems exposed; one wonders if she simply collapsed from exhaustion. At the same time, however, lying down in such environments is a gesture of placing trust in a place, implying that the sleeping woman feels extremely comfortable all over the globe, while also asking if this is really the case. In addition to public spaces in Europe, this series also has been realised in a number of different places in Southeast Asia. There, other sleeping people join our sleeper, without explanations of whether they are also guests, or, perhaps, the hosts in this instance. Under these circumstances, the place in question appears theirs; their sleeping in public is part and parcel of that city. The sleeping woman, having established a place for herself here, appears somewhat out of place, yet she is accepted by the peaceful, resting souls around her.

These activities in public spaces are not intended as conquest, but on the contrary, as an offering, a gift to wherever she might find herself.

The resulting images relay inner and outer realities, making the fine line between the two blur. Lying down in a public space is analogous to internalising, thereby making inner realms seem part of that which is external, becoming a nocturnal theatre of sleep. Following the unsettled phase of falling asleep, when trees appear like the balloons in which cartoon characters speak, followed by images of the sleeping woman, dream-like, as she makes herself comfortable in Wroclaw’s model city. The deep sleep at the heart of the series features the sleeping woman in emptiness, as if in the eye of a proverbial storm. The final picture portrays her waking up as her surroundings come to life, as the sleeping woman becomes, personally, the calm in the midst of a storm.

In a world in which mobility and mobilisations are bywords, sleeping poses a stark contrast.

By claiming a place for a while, the fleeting aspect of the endeavour is accentuated, highlighting the picture’s static nature.

As the sleeping woman put trust in her surroundings, she also, simultaneously, conquers each place. These pictures become images of dreams, representing an inner trade-off: the offer of taking back something long forgotten in a society obsessed with activity and the idea of being active.

Bjørn Melhus