Due to their strategically active cerebral nature, dreams should ultimately have a place in the Parliament of Others.

Last night, I dreamed of walking through a large exhibition in an important but undefined museum, shrouded in the fog of images. Three or four rooms displayed conceptual art pieces. I was there at the pre-opening, surrounded by other artists, journalists, critics, museum directors, gallery directors, and most Portuguese art collectors. The customary smiles, hugs, and kisses mingled with smiles of complicity and surprise directed primarily at me. This slightly irritating deference was because I was represented in the exhibition, as someone who surprised me explained, with several works from the 1980s, among a majority of works by other authors from the 1990s and the first two decades of this century.

As the works were shown to me, I felt a strange sensation: I did not recognise them as mine, except for a black-and-white postcard (called “documentation” at the time) of a long-lost video. Its title: “Patrícia,” 1980. I could not remember those works as being mine. The next day, I attended a guided tour of the exhibition. One of the curators led the way. It was then that I realised that all the works displayed in that sort of conceptual department of the exhibition were, in fact, recent works by younger artists whom I either did not know or barely knew—except for one long-time friend. My postcard was placed among the works of this friend of mine, which were generally large in physical size. So, Alzheimer’s is not my problem!

This exhibition of conceptual or post-conceptual works (as those after the 1970s are generally called), entirely monochromatic, could not have had a more favourable impact on my subconscious. That is why I woke up and could now record this memory. The advantage of dreams is this: they have no colour. Works of art, architecture, and audiences—all in black and white.

In other words, we almost always dream in black and white. Only once did a bloody and living ball of flesh shoot out from under my bed. I believe it is because in the subconscious—especially in dreams—there is no perception but only memories of perception, the memory of colour but not colour itself, which can only be felt in person through the eyes in dialogue with neurons. We can describe qualia, but to be precise, we need to show what we mean to explain.

We can assign codes to colours—almost as many codes as colours are reaching our eyes—and thus know which lipstick perfectly suits our lover’s taste. Without these numbers, however, it is practically impossible to be sure which lipstick our beloved wears when faced with a Lancôme display case. Perhaps it is through a similar mechanism that neurons memorise colours despite everything, but just as they rarely fire chromatic sensations in dreams, the same happens in thought. I can think about red but not see or feel red due to its internal verbal pronouncement.

But if this is so—if we invariably dream in black and white or without colour—why do dreams have such importance in creation, especially artistic creation? A plausible hypothesis is that their power is inherently conceptual.

Coloured dreams are, therefore, pastiches.

Due to their strategically active cerebral nature, dreams should ultimately have a place in the Parliament of Others.