The Machine of Horizontal Dreams: Reimagining Progress as Pleasure through Collective Dreaming and Somatic Practices / Maria Ubera (2024)

The Machine of Horizontal Dreams ‘TMoHD’, is an artistic project that comprises a thesis and a performance installation: A Horizontal Dream – Transmission Machine. A Horizontal Dream – Transmission Machine, is a 33-minute performance installation, involving five performers, exploring an evolving choreographic score within an immersive environment of light, sound, and video. By foregrounding group decision-making, pleasure, and imaginative temporalities, the work resists the neoliberal insistence on forward momentum and individual success, proposing instead a form of progress that values connection, sustainability, and collective well-being. This document synthesises years of experience in artistic research and expanded choreography practice, raising critical questions about the public demonstration of the performance and embedded critique within it. Through A Horizontal Dream – Transmission Machine, I challenge Western ideals of progress, offering alternative forms of embodied knowledge rooted in collective dreaming, somatic practices, and feminist inquiry. The project explores the possibilities of collective, relational progress, focusing on pleasure as a political tool for social transformation. TMoHD leverages Practice-as-Research (PaR) and Performance-as-Research (PeR) methodologies to create a dynamic interplay between theory and practice. Through interdisciplinary frameworks, ranging from Body-Mind Centering (BMC), ‘Landscape Dramaturgy’, and Posthumanism, to the works of political theorists such as Adrienne Maree Brown (2019), Ana Vujanović (2018) and Luciana Parisi (2004), the project re-imagines progress not as linear or hierarchical but as emergent, relational, and interconnected. These frameworks inform the choreographic and collaborative processes, enabling a collective intelligence that shapes each iteration of the performance. 4 Through a critical engagement with pleasure activism, feminist dramaturgy, and posthumanist theories, this thesis interrogates the socio-political implications of pleasure, stillness, and relational progress. It contributes to contemporary discourse by offering a model of choreography and performance that blurs the boundaries between practice and theory, body and technology, human and non-human entities. The research challenges conventional notions of crescendo and success, suggesting new ways of thinking about performance, pleasure, and progress that privilege collective dreaming and transformative practices over individualistic achievements. This research aims to disrupt traditional hierarchical structures and nurture collaborative, non-linear, and collective processes. This thesis explores how choreographic practices can serve as a space for social transformation. By integrating interdisciplinary frameworks, this research contributes to a growing discourse that seeks to redefine progress through relational, cooperative, and imaginative forms of knowledge production. By challenging conventional ideas of crescendo and satisfaction, this project advocates for new temporalities that emphasise collective thinking, dreaming, and pleasure as acts of resistance against neoliberalism and individualism.