The Lullaby Experiment (for 35 sleepers, 10 attendants, 4 singers, and solo viewers) invites people to sleep at the Walker Art Center to experience giving up their daytime selves and being sung to lovingly throughout their nightlong stay. Participants bring their sleeping gear and supplies to create personal comfort within this rare opportunity to explore the museum, the public night, and the soft mystery of slumber. This work of participatory art is gentle and creative misbehavior with fellow sleepers where sleeping does not belong. Within a live pianissimo concert of love, The Lullaby Experiment is a struggle for peace and rest, a remembrance of affection, and a succumbing to one’s inner nature.
Marcus Young, founding artist of Grace Minnesota, creates conceptual and behavioral art in the form of personal practice and collective experience. Recent works include Don’t you feel it too?, a mind-body experiment and aspiring spiritual technology of dancing one’s inner life in public places; and Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk, a process of imprinting poetry integrated into Saint Paul’s Department of Public Works’ standard methods of replacing broken sidewalks, thus slowly turning the city into a large book of poems.
The Lullaby Experiment is created by Marcus Young and Grace Minnesota collaborating with Leslie Ball, CITYDESKSTUDIO, and others with support from Northern Lights.mn and presented by the Walker Art Center.