Project Somnolence: Slumber School

Join us for Slumber School: an evening takeover of the Dream Machine, located in the Trongate/Calton area just off Glasgow Green. Modelled as a night-class for nocturnal listening, musing and writing, this is a free event designed to provide immersive encounters with somnolence through light, sound, creative and critical discussion. The event features a reading group, listening exercise and opportunities for ambient working. Open to everyone and anyone, we will talk about the personal, political and environmental issue of sleep in an informal and welcoming space.
While we have a structure for the evening, you are welcome to drop in and out as you wish.
Provisional schedule

6pm — Doors

6:30pm — Dream clinic

7pm — Break

7:15pm — Reading group: Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018). Please read the book or this extract in advance.

8:15pm — Break

8:30pm — Deep listening exercise

9:15pm — Creative time: writing/drawing/reading/scoring

10pm — Informal discussion/hangout
Refreshments
The venue has a soft-drink bar, and we encourage you to bring snacks for sustenance.
What to bring
We also recommend you bring a notebook, pen or whatever drawing and writing tools you prefer.
A digital extract from the book we are discussing will be provided via email to everyone who signs up via eventbrite. For optimum results, we recommend buying and reading the whole thing beforehand :)
Why Slumber School?
Night classes are a really great way to learn something new outside of the working day. The energy of the evening, especially in September (as a transitional moment between summer and autumn), presents an alternative way of attending to your creative and critical mind.
We are inspired by the capacious notion of ‘study’ put forward by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney in The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (2013):
We are committed to the idea that study is what you do with other people. It’s talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held under the name of speculative practice. The notion of a rehearsal—being in a kind of workshop, playing in a band, in a jam session, or old men sitting on a porch, or people working together in a factory—there are these various modes of activity. The point of calling it “study” is to mark that the incessant and irreversible intellectuality of these activities is already present.
In everyday life, we are often talking about sleep and dreaming. The point of Slumber School is to focus some time and space on these issues and make connections between how you think about sleep and dreams in relation to wider questions of society, politics, inequality, ecology and more.
Venue FAQs

Do you have parking?
We have a carpark around the back of the building as well as street parking nearby. The carpark is a slightly cheaper option and can be paid via app.
What are public transport links like?
We are a 15 minute walk away from the St Enoch Centre subway station, High Street, Bellgrove and Bridgeton train station. There is also a bus stop right outside the venue which the 18, 64, 263, N18 run from.
Is the venue accessible?
The venue is partially accessible with the aid of our staff. Each room is wheelchair accessible for audience members and toilets are accessible. Please get in contact with us if you have any other questions about accessibility.

Host or Publisher Osmosis Press & the Alasdair Gray Archive