Filling the City with Dreams – 24h performance at Zendai MOMA in Shanghai, February 2008

During 24 hours the Per Hüttner copied the dreams of artist Yang ZhiFei all around the city of Shanghai. Yang ZhiFei has written down her dreams all her adult life. She sent a selection of these in Chinese to Per Hüttner. Through the repetition the artist, who does not read or speak Chinese, hoped to eventually understand their meaning.

In order to make the understanding easier, the artist took help from the medium Jane Lo. She remained in France drawing and transmitting the dreams to him by means of telepathy. When Hüttner had a sense of understanding a part of the dream he would proceed to make a drawing of what he perceived that Yang ZhiFei had dreamt. The drawing were taped up around Shanghai.

After the performance, when compared, the images drawn by Hüttner and Lo showed a surprisngly high degree of congruence.