“Lucid Dreams” in which the dreamer is aware of the fact that he is dreaming are, in a way, a constant balancing act on the thin dividing line between the free-flowing current of dreams and awakening at the realization of dreaming. However, the collision of both realities is inevitable. Ideas which are possible when one is suspended between dreams and reality, crumble when faced with the unyielding laws of both physical and social existence. They crash when we proverbially bring them back down to earth.

They seem just as absurd as Tatlin’s dreams of a flying proletariat equipped with avian devices made of wood, leather and silk – a working class freed both from the ground and of the unnatural and constraining artificial flying machines.

Like Tesla’s contemplation of a wireless electricity transfer – free and accessible to all; electricity, which would nullify the centre-periphery relations and enable a total decentralization of energy in the time when electricity was one of the crucial signs of progress. Similarly to Tesla’s aspiration for a limitless and egalitarian energy transfer, Tatlin’s solution to the problem of human flight was in its essence distinctly practical, but at the same time entirely lyrical, infeasible and in a dire conflict with the possibilities offered by the world outside the author.

Both the scientist and the artist were bound to a certain utopian poetics, which led to the collision of brilliant ideas and severe reality. The field of art can offer a space for a new evaluation of such thoughts, since it is aware of reality, but not fully subordinated to it; it lies suspended between the possible and impossible and renews the ideas that were dismissed under the dictate of utilitarianism. (Žiga Dobnikar)

CREDITS:
Electro Engineering: Otto Urpelainen