Institute
The Institute of Sleepless Nights is a study group, a practice-based research project, devoted to the art of sleeplessness and a wide range of troubles related to the act of sleeping. We share our curiosity, interests and investigations by organizing a series of events with artistic contributions and lectures by experts.
Our study is motivated by the recognition that every night we are practitioners of bad sleep, committed to being awake in the middle of the night for multiple reasons. We acknowledge that what seem to appear as personal and private matters are indeed part of a global syndrome. In exchange we strive to understand the phenomenon of “sleepless nights” in its relation to our sociocultural, economical, environmental, political and historical contexts.
Team
Michikazu Matsune
is an artist who uses diverse approaches which range from stage-performances, interventions in public and private spaces, to fabricating artefacts for performative action. In search for ‘a biography’, Michikazu transforms and performs a world seemingly familiar. His work, characterized both critical and playful at the same time, combines conceptualist and documentarist methods. Michikazu is the initiator of Homesick Festival (since 2017), a unique performance festival that takes place in private homes. He is originally from the seaside town of Kobe and has been based in Vienna since the 1990s. Over the last years, he has been brilliant at sleeping badly.
Pieternel Vermoortel
is a curator, writer, editor based in Vienna. She has been passionate about decentering curatorial practice and stretching the possibilities of how cultural production can be made public, experienced, discussed, or written about. As the artistic director of Netwerk Aalst (2016-2022), Belgium, she experimented together with artists and citizens on ‘how to live together’. At FormContent, London, she worked on a nomadic project, It’s Moving from I to It (2012 -2016), taking the pulse of conversations on art writing, authorship, subject-object relation. Her teaching activities keep her sharp while her nights are dependent on the position of the moon and tidal movements.
Thomas Geiger
is an interdisciplinary artist based in Vienna. Using performance, sculpture and language he creates fragmentary stages and communicative situations that suspend classical delineations of public, private, and institutional space. Thomas tests and accommodates various forms of labour and collaboration in his multifaceted practice. He originally comes from the German-French-Swiss border and is usually a very good sleeper and intense dreamer. He is also an expert at falling asleep quickly. He prefers hard mattresses and cool bedrooms.
Contact
The Institute of Sleepless Nights
Pernerstorfergasse 5/B4
1100 Vienna
sleepless@instituteofsleeplessnights.org
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Hosted by Studio Matsune
Supported by Stadt Wien Kultur and BMKÖS
Project initiated by Michikazu Matsune
and developed with Thomas Geiger
and Pieternel Vermoortel
© The Institute of Sleepless Nights 2022 - 2024