Instant cult

In 2013, the art historian and media theoretician Jonathan Crary could still write in his book 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, that ‘sleep […] in its profound uselessness and intrinsic passivity, with the incalculable losses it causes in production time, circulation, and consumption […] subsists as one of the great human affronts to the voraciousness of contemporary capitalism.’ But the conception of dreams in Hernández López’s films is more complex than simply seeing sleep as periods of non-labour or non-consumption.

Hernández López addresses dreams most indirectly in her latest documentary essay like moths to light, in which she interviews the CEO of Prophetic; a startup that uses headbands to send ultrasonic impulses into the brain while asleep, promising to induce lucid dreams in which our minds may directly dictate and shape dream activities. Or as vouched for by the company’s CEO: ‘You could fly, you could sleep with your favourite celebrity, you could explore your dream world, you could talk to a dead relative. The only constraints are what you can imagine.’ Dreams thus become not only an object that may be shaped and tailored to our desires through technological advancements, but they also enter into the sphere of intent, suddenly tamed by some new technology. It is as if we could make a film in front of us and, at the same time, inhabit it.

The device for inducing lucid dreams is rather paradigmatic for the interests of Hernández López. It is a media technology that takes as its object the very thing supposedly unreachable to capital. Dreams become something we need a subscription for; suddenly, we can consume our own dreaming. Consumerism expands to the up-until-now poorly monetised field of sleep and rest. On the other hand, the expansion of consumerism is possible through privately developed technology. The tools available on the market no longer intensify the strength of our fists or lengthen the reach of our arms but directly infiltrate the workings of our brain and perception. The technological apparatus therefore becomes fully internal to our experience. The infiltration of the technological devices and their private, profit-driven, ownership structures into our experiences is a recurring topic in Hernández López’s films. (A look at the Prophetic website’s frequently asked questions provides the reassuring note that the company does not insert any paid advertisements into its clients’ dreams.)

Dreams are thus a highly appropriate sphere for contemporary paradoxes, as they are intimate and related to individuality, personal history, and trauma. However, with the widening reach of contemporary capital that Hernández López researches in her films, dreams are at the same time exactly that which is (in)directly controlled by markets and market-related catastrophes. For Hernández López, dreams are not only a complex translation for the unconscious but rather constant manifestations of the very real upcoming catastrophes, which we disavow more successfully while awake. Nightmares of global warming and the dangerous lack of regulation of financial markets will be easily resolved in the future by subscribing to devices that offer control over our dreams. Dreams in Hernández López’s films are principally the desires and anxieties of the contemporary financial system and not those of its independent, critical and private individuals.

Yet, in her films, Hernández López succeeds in making the study of runaway financial markets and the infiltration of technological devices into our very being more than just a despondent plague of our times. On the visual level, Hernández López approaches the contemporary through a non-judgemental persistence that lives in a certain bond between original material, archival imagery, and screen recordings. Her films are therefore both genre and visual hybrids that may, perhaps due to their dreamy nature, open the door to a generative engagement with our present.

Oskar Ban Brejc

*Crary, Jonathan. 2023: 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. London: Verso, p. 10.