The book Archive of Dreams is published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name that

will open the Archiv der Avantgarden. Marking the hundredth anniversary of the first surrealist

manifesto and the founding of the Bureau of Surrealist Research in Paris in 1924, the volume is

dedicated to the surrealist movement as well as the networks it engendered and the artistic stimuli

it provided in the twentieth century. The idea was for the Bureau to collect dream testimonies in

whatever form, not only to preserve and analyse them but also to give active expression to them

in artistic processes. The publication shows how the practices of the avant-gardes blurred the

boundaries between dream and reality, between the traditional, passive notion of the archive

and the idea of active, innovative artistic experimentand thus ultimately also between the past,

the present, and possible futures.



Works and documents from the period before, during, and after the Second World War shed light

on the working methods of international artists and the global network they were involved in. They

are complemented by diverse reflections on global protest movements and the traumas of war,

thus connecting, too, to everyday experiences in a Europe beset by warfare.