«Dreams of Terror» is an artistic-scientific structure combining forms of research, archiving, and performative embodiment of the political unconscious of the 20th century. The project includes three interrelated modules: a series of video installations, a lecture-research program, and a staged performance based on Grigory Dashevsky’s poem Heinrich and Semyon.
The project is conceived as a hybrid of institute and dream, investigating not memory of terror, but its dream mechanisms — the ways in which power penetrates the unconscious, producing forms of fear, guilt, desire, and submission.

DREAM OF TERROR

DREAM OF TERROR

Inspired by Irina Paperno’s Dreams of Terror, Charlotte Beradt’s The Third Reich of Dreams, and Grigory Dashevsky’s poem Heinrich and Semyon

The project draws on two key research traditions:
Irina Paperno’s Dreams of Terror, which treats Soviet dreams as an anthropological source for the history of Stalinism;
Charlotte Beradt’s The Third Reich of Dreams, in which private dreams of Nazi Germany’s citizens are analyzed as documents of collective psychopolitical experience.
Within this framework, Grigory Dashevsky’s poem Heinrich and Semyon functions as a dream about ideology, reflecting the impossible love between two mirrored subjects — a former Nazi and a former Communist. Their dialogue embodies the internal dialectic of totalitarian desire: striving for recognition and dissolution in the Other, whether it is a party, an idea, or a beloved.

Dreams of Terror is a museum of inner experience, where the material is not an artifact, but a psychic form. The museum operates as a performative institute, where research is conducted through artistic action, and the exhibit is the very act of thinking, bodily presence, and dreaming.
The project unfolds on three interconnected levels:
Video Archive («Dreams of Power»)
A series of video works reconstructing dreams of Stalinist and Nazi eras based on archival testimonies and the texts of Paperno and Beradt. Each piece is a visual score of fear and submission, where the dream is considered a political statement.
Lecture-Research Program («Institute»)
A public lecture incorporating documentation and analysis, blending historical commentary with performative elements. This module develops a scientific discourse of the dream, describing how ideology produces inner scenes — scenes of desire, guilt, love, and obedience.
Performance Based on Dashevsky’s Poem Heinrich and Semyon («The Body of the Dream»)
The poem is performed as a tragic agon between two mirrored figures. The performance unfolds as a dream, where the dialogue between the characters becomes a movement between memory and desire, between history and psyche. Lines are spoken as fragments of inner speech, and the stage functions as a laboratory exploring the bodily topography of ideology.