To make sense of the 8-hour, 2013 Sleep film from Juha Lilja, I compressed it down 64 times (now it’s just under 8 minutes) and used some representative sound samples to see how the soundtrack changes over time. Yeah, this destroys the whole “aesthetic” of the uber-slow film, but it allows a human to see and hear the changes that are almost imperceptible in the original. Here it is:
Some initial thoughts on the film from someone completely unqualified to render judgement:
- Who sleeps in the nude on top of the covers? Rather than feeling some sort of companionship with the nude, sleeping filmmaker, I too often felt more like a voyeur, especially for those parts when the camera – for no particular reason – zooms in on his butt. I bet this forced voyeurism leaves more than a few spectators uncomfortable (just like the Warhol original). It was especially uncomfortable when the POV switched from the overhead, pseudo-drone perspective to the sitting-on-the-bed-like-a-serial-killer-beside-the-next-victim view. Getting closer just made the film more uncomfortable. You never knew when he’d wake up and wonder why such a freak as the spectator was watching him sleep.
- Yeah, there’s definitely a homo-erotic aspect to this film, but it takes a while to get there. I felt like getting some sheets for the guy — I can’t sleep without sheets (yes, there’s that “companionship” aspect with film’s sleep mimesis). It’s like he was intentionally putting on a show for the spectators, but only his practically-lifeless body was there. In the beginning of the film, it was hard to tell the gender of the sleeper (unlike the Warhol flick). Makes confused spectators wonder if they should feel aroused or not as the film starts. The guy does not have a very “manly” body — he’s all soft, fleshy, and androgynous. The resolution of the film only makes the gender that much more difficult for spectators to define – can’t make out body hair.
- There’s definitely a link between what he’s hearing while asleep and what he dreams. We do hear the street sounds (traffic) during the film and he dreams of being in a vehicle as well as seeing vehicles. There’s also a dog bark that we hear, and there’s at least one dog in the dream. It’s like the guy can’t escape the world even in his dreams. We’re linked to the guy because what we hear as diegetic sound while “in the room” manifests itself in his head: we both make the same associations with the outdoor sounds but he’s sound asleep and we’re awake. Sleep is not an escape from modernity in this film. His dreams are entirely utilitarian and efficient: all motion and no interaction with other humans as a good neoliberal “drone” should behave.
- The dreams are interesting because the first one is a “flying dream” and the second is a “driving dream.” The first dream is more interesting because of the tension between nature on his right and modernity on his left. The second driving dream is pure modernity. Flying dreams usually have something to do with freedom and escaping the pressure of the world. Perhaps he can escape for a bit, but the second dream brings him right down to earth again and literally making fast forward progress.
Some other thoughts related to the text:
- Another way to look at sleep is as a requirement to be a good worker. Without enough sleep, workers will make mistakes, and industrial mistakes are costly. From this perspective, sleep affirms and conforms to neoliberal desires for workers. Case in point: the Air Force brutally enforces its sleep requirements on pilots and aircrew. These folks are not allowed to be bothered while they are resting up to fly. In fact, if they “bust crew rest” they aren’t allowed to fly those multi-million dollar aircraft. This sleep requirement is also tracked for commercial truck drivers where a stationary GPS signal tells corporate if they have completed sufficient rest to drive — safety, and avoiding expensive lawsuits, is essential. Rather than sleep being rebellious, it’s probably more fundamental requirement for modernity to function properly and efficiently. Sleeping on the job or sleeping instead of working or partying instead of sleeping, now that’s rebellious!
- Sleep has been commodified. Modernity has intruded this last bastion of humanity. Right now, I’m wearing a Fitbit monitor that tells me, and every app that I’ve allowed access to it, all the details of my sleep: start/stop times, total duration, times in each zone (REM, light, heavy), overall quality of sleep as well as awake times and heartrate during sleep. Sleep has been digitized. It’s not an escape from the commodified world, it’s part of it and corporations will sell us stuff to improve our sleep so we can be better workers. The noises we hear during sleep – if loud enough – can also impact our sleep: the modernity monitor monitors modernity in a neoliberal feedback loop of sorts.
- The “slow” type of film that is Sleep has also been commodified and is readily available – and popular – on Pluto TV (and elsewhere). There’s a channel called “SLOW TV” that tends to show a lot of trains traveling through the countryside of Norway. It has the exact same POV as the second dream in Sleep. These “rebellious” slow films have gone mainstream and don’t seem so rebellious anymore.
- The film Sleep just like all slow moving media has a meditative quality about it. In that way, it’s something of an escape from modernity. But we’re not sure if the film wants us to calm down so we can sleep to be better workers or if it wants us to rebel against modernity.
- The sounds of Sleep are entirely modern, from the ominous ticking clock to the minimalist electronic music that increases in complexity and volume over a very long time, reminding us that we haven’t escaped modernity. The clock ticking is barely perceptible with all the static. This static, also known as pink or white noise, is also something that folks often use to fall asleep and block out all the other noises of modernity, like the traffic and dogs that the spectators hear. The ticking starts the film and remains for hours before a triad of tones are added. The ticking fades out, then reemerges before finally being replaced with an electronic beat that continues until the end of the film. There’s a crescendo of electronic music for the final segment before he wakes up to modernity.
- There’s a movement afoot to add (restore?) an “aura” of sorts to digital media – called “cryptoart.” Folks are adding an NFT (non-fungible token) to digital art so that it gains an “aura” and is the “one original” bit of digital art. It’s a way to get around the reproducibility issue that renders all digital art the same. It’s based on the energy wasting of blockchain (read about that here). There’s even a website that shows how much energy is wasted for each of these cryptoart digital creations. What’s the point? So that artists can sell their digital art. So, digital art now has a “digital aura.”
I think that exhausts my meandering, random thoughts for now. (6 Mar 2021)