Individual Work
Our dreams are a second life

The work is a performance in Second Lifeone and one of Belén Gache's videopoems from the “Readings” series. In "Our dreams are a second life", the verses of the eccentric French poet Gérard de Nerval are read by Belén Gache herself, but they appear to be read by a fictional character, a virtual avatar of the author, who wanders around an equally virtual city, reading in real time.
The author's avatar wanders adrift reciting absorbed by the places that she finds. Gerard de Nerval's text begins with the phrase: "Dreams are a Second Life" and invite us to think in a second virtual life, a space where everything is possible. This work transfers poetry to the world of Second Life, a virtual community launched in 2003 that allows people to interact with other users in a multiplayer online wirtual word. The work suggests the self-portrait on the internet and the construction of virtual roles and identities as alternatives to personify actions and measure their impacts in virtual channels.
Reading, a normally intimate and silent activity, becomes the protagonist of the performance, and takes place, time and space, becoming visible to the other avatars that the protagonist encounters along the way. Thus, the author's avatar recites verses in different places like the streets of a virtualized Paris, to a nightclub full of people or floating in the milky way. The work proposes a reflection about the self-portrait on the internet and the construction of virtual roles and identities as alternatives to personify actions and measure their impacts in virtual channels.

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Nerval was one of the main figures of the French romantic movement. His poetics had a strong influence on symbolism and surrealism. Belonging to extreme literary groups such as The Haschischin Club or the Bouzingo, he was known for his many eccentricities, among which was, for example, walking through the gardens of the Palais-Royal with a lobster tied to a ribbon, as a pet. His prose poem Aurélia gives an autobiographical account of his fall into madness. In it, he discovers the power of dreams and restores his faith in love by leaving the world of reason. Nerval committed suicide at the age of 47. He hanged himself from a lamppost with a rope that he said had belonged to the Queen of Sheba. In the pockets of his coat they found some sheets with Aurélia's manuscript, a text that became his spiritual testament. There, the poet categorizes sleep as a "supernatural" state. The text begins with this phrase: "Sleep is a Second Life."