It has been proposed that there is a single way, artistic and testimonial, to communicate a catastrophe: narrate it in its pure facticity. Isn’t this how dreams are told? Dense with truth and linear detail, full of spurs, we spin through visual dislocations all night. Woolgathering meanders around collective catastrophes, animal-others and the contradictory disasters of the dreamscape through composed stories and a goat intermission. These are joyful and curious disasters. They confound and charm in their numinous animal skins and bones and bodies.

Writer John Berger reminds us that animals first entered the imagination as messengers or promises. This project asks: what are they foretelling, these creatures with eyes whose color changes according to the light? What small disasters do you point to?

Dream-tellers: Maile Costa Colbert; Mallory Brennan; Emily Schuman; Joan Schuman. Interview excerpt: Daniela Cascella: producer-curator, Joan Schuman; contact mics, Kevin T. Allen. Field Sounds, Composition, Text: Joan Schuman. More information at http://www.joanschuman.com/hyperacousia/posts/woolgathering/