Dreams’ Time Capsule

The Dreams’ Time Capsule is part of the wider project Dreams Archive, a long-term participatory research project exploring dreams, memory and the passage of time.

Since 2011, participants have been invited to enter an inflatable structure—the Dream Capsule—and, alone and in an intimate environment, record memories of their dreams using a directional microphone. Designed with Michele Tavano as a portable structure that can be transported in a small suitcase, the capsule has travelled through galleries and public spaces across Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

Over the years, the project has collected more than 2,300 recordings in different languages. Each participant was asked to provide their date of birth, nationality and email address, with the intention of receiving their original recording back ten years later.

The delivery phase transforms the archive into a time machine: returning each recording to its donor confronts them with the dreams, expectations and visions of the future they once expressed. The distance between the moment of recording and its return creates a space for reflection on personal transformation, generational differences and social, political and economic change.

The archive also records how historical events enter the intimate sphere of individual lives. Among the testimonies are recordings made around moments such as Egypt’s first democratic vote after decades of Mubarak’s dictatorship and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom.

The Dreams’ Time Capsule is therefore both an archive and an ongoing social experiment: a collection of individual memories that, over time, becomes a collective portrait of changing expectations, fears and desires.