The Past Dreams the Future Present’: Dream as Political Visual Historiography in the work of Artist and Film Maker Derek Jarman

Oliver, Elisa ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5555-5466 and Whitehall, Jonathan (2022) The Past Dreams the Future Present’: Dream as Political Visual Historiography in the work of Artist and Film Maker Derek Jarman. IDEA – Interdisciplinary Discourses, Education and Analysis (2). pp. 72-88. ISSN 2754-2416

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Abstract

The word dream is often used in connection with Derek Jarman’s oeuvre and in his 1996 book on Jarman entitled, Dreams of England, Michael O’Pray observes that a bracket of sleeping or unconsciousness was often used by the artist in his films ( 115). Jarman himself referred to his creativity as being part of the ‘dream world of the soul’ ( Kicking the Pricks, 108) and in a stretching of the dream definition, his love of home movies as “a longing for paradise” ( Kicking the Pricks, 54). This paper will argue that Jarman’s direct, and indirect utilisation of the dream in his work, is a creative and disruptive act that facilitates a temporal play across the past, the present and the future, constructing a unique personal and political visual historiography. To establish the substance of the dream in informing this historiography, alongside the attendant concepts of the vision and the alchemical, we need to explore, what Rowland Wymer describes as “Jarman’s life long preoccupation with the Renaissance” (Wymer, Derek Jarman, p 4).