The House of Dreams 2005 / 2008

The House of Dreams

The House of Dreams was installed at London's Serpentine Gallery at the turn of 2005-2006.

The "total" installation is the concept the Kabakovs coined for their work. Such work is total "because it is made in such a way that the observer himself (together with various involved components) enters its interior and is absorbed by it. … About the total installation one can say that it gives us the illusion that the place to which the author sends us truly exists. … Everything should remind us of a theater stage that inspects the spectator during the intermissions (like the Cats staging on Broadway). In this sense, the total installation is the place where an event took place, is taking place, or can take place."

The observer is displaced in a state of half dream, and we are transported to a world of half illusion "where one simultaneously dreams while awake and yet maintains complete control over oneself and one’s current situation". So says Ilya Kabakov about several important aspects of the complex concept of the total installation.

The documentation of such an experiential space has a special value, particularly when planned and thought out by the artists themselves. "An installation cannot be reproduced without its author; one simply would not know how to put it together." So such an image’s longevity is important and historic to each document.