“Fragments of the Dream” at Imec, the planet of dreams

"In my dream I am tall and well-built, whereas in reality I am rather short and fat." The speaker is a 30-year-old farmer. He was one of thousands of people interviewed in the 1970s as part of a vast anthropological study led by Jean and Françoise Duvignaud and Jean-Pierre Corbeau. The farmer had chosen to talk about a recurring dream: he is in a stadium, has to run, his wife compliments him. Exploring dream life in France, in all social classes, would thus lead to the publication of a book in 1979, The Bank of Dreams. The documents from this project belong to one of the collections entrusted to Imec, the Institute of Memories of Contemporary Publishing . And, until the fall, the exhibition "Fragments of the Dream" offers a thematic dive into its immense vein of archives, curated by editor Claire Paulhan, formerly of Imec, and philosopher Olivier Schefer, author of a book with the same title.

The Imec, located since 2004 on the outskirts of Caen (Calvados) in a former abbey, houses more than 700 collections of writers, artists, thinkers... from the 20th and 21st centuries and a vast library housed in the abbey church. The archives are in the basements which can be reached after opening several p