Sleepover is a new solo exhibition by Damjanski. At the opening on Friday, July 18 the artist will ask people to join New Float’s virtual space and put down their phones/laptops to take a communal 30-minute nap. Linearly similar to Allen Kaprow’s Happenings but takes ephemeral activations from the physical world into a digital landscape. This shared digital space allows for an international community to take respite from their surroundings, if only for a short time. This digital happening is a continuation of Damjanski’s Napster app- an Augmented Reality iPhone app that allows users to explore their surroundings to select a cozy spot for Damjanski to take a virtual nap. The app revealed potential nap locations for Damjanski by placing a 3D model of the artist sleeping in any given space. For the piece in New Float, three oversized figures of Damjanski sleeping are borrowed from the app and placed in a room filled with clouds. This fantasy dream state is where the user is encouraged to engage with his three-story figure, throughout the multi-leveled space. Rather than the immediacy expected from online engagements, this piece allows you to explore in a slowed-down time signature of play and curiosity. Much like an open-world video game, the user is encouraged to explore different levels and dynamics of the space while a lullaby softly twinkles in the background, encouraging sleep. 

New Float is an exhibition space without a physical presence but geolocated to Kulturforum next to Potsdamer Platz in the heart of Berlin. Soon to be the site for the Museum of the 20th Century but not until 2026. Placing a digital space in an in-situ building site- recontextualizes the liminal space into a digital haven. That is the purpose of New Float as a space, to allow for the exploration of digital pieces in a space where 20th-century art will most likely not acknowledge its presence and impact. Derrida’s deconstruction philosophy asks for “not the preservation of something that has been given to us, and, at the same time, heterogeneity, something absolutely new, and a break.” The onus is put on the digital world’s augmented reality to shift the understanding of what can be a museum’s hallowed space. Not to divide the culture of what a museum should be but to encourage what it could be giving representation to all art sources. 

Sleepover is the newest addition to New Float’s exhibition space and creates a dream state for all to join. This exploratory play that is exhibited in Sleepover calls back to Dadaists sharing the joke with their audience. The question posed, “Do you want to join us?”

Text by Gabrielle Buffong (@man_ray_eyes)