Art director Naoki Hayakawa works 16 hours daily in a creative, neo-totalitarian advertisement company in Tokyo. The working pressure causes a mental condition between sleep and wakefulness where he has strange and wonderful dreams. When he tells his superiors about his state of mind, he is told to exploit his dreams by using ideas from them in his work. This triggers a crisis as it occurs to him that his whole self is being instrumentalized.
Ane Hjort Guttu (b. 1971) is an artist living in Oslo. She works in a variety of media, but has in recent years mainly concentrated on film and video works, ranging from investigative documentary to poetic fiction. Guttu’s practice is concerned with individuals' everyday operation within larger structures – institutions of labour, education or politics – that define and interpellate subjectivities. Among recurrent themes in her work are the relationship between freedom and power, economy and the public space, social change and limits of action. Between 2011 and 2016 she directed various portrait films where a central conflict reappears: an individual dissident struggling to handle oppressive social structures. Guttu is also active as a curator and writer.
