Three video artworks explore dreams and idleness in online screenings

Three video works are available for streaming this week, each engaging with themes of dreams, reality, and creative idleness. Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler's 2006 video Night Shift, screening online until 10 June at David Roberts Art Foundation, features an aging white police officer in a patrol car with rotating partners who discuss their dreams, blurring lines between sleep and wakefulness while commenting on cinematic fantasy. Kenyan director Wanuri Kahiu's 2009 science-fiction short Pumzi, part of e-flux's 'École du soir: Six Films, from Rwanda and Beyond' program until 9 June, follows Asha, an administrator in a post-apocalyptic African center where dreams are suppressed, who escapes to seek natural life after discovering viable soil. Helen Cammock's 2020 video-essay They Call It Idlewild, screened by Wysing Arts Centre after her exhibition was interrupted by UK lockdown, reflects on idleness, productivity, and artistic creativity through a voiceover and a rendition of Johnny Mercer's 1933 song Lazybones, critiquing accusations of laziness by the owner-class. These works use dreams as a motif to probe societal norms and personal aspirations.