On what sky are my nights written?
We live every day under a new sky, and sleep every night a different sleep. Who knows if the two don’t weave links without our knowledge, the day sky printing its colors to the rhythm of our night? To explore this relationship, for several months I respected an intangible protocol, photographing the sky of each of my days, and recording the hypnogram of each of my nights. Every morning, I combined the previous day’s sky and the night’s graph into a single image and indicated as a caption the context of the two elements of the image (temperatures, precipitation, sunrise and sunset times for the sky, and sunset and sunrise times, sleep time and distribution between the different sleep phases for the hypnogram).
These graphs represent my own sleep, but they could end up being anyone’s. Every night, every individual has their own hypnogram, punctuated by an alternation between medium blue phases of light sleep, like a link hanging from their consciousness, dark blue phases of deep sleep, like a plunge into oblivion, blue phases clear of paradoxical sleep, like a trip to the land of dreams, and red phases of awakening, like a weaving between the past day, the presence in one’s dreams and the announcement of the day to come.
These little visual poems, which retain their share of opacity (the reality and extent of the relationship between sky and sleep retain their mystery), sign the irreducible presence of the unique in routine and repetition, and the irruption of life and mystery in the neutrality of figures and graphics.
Gaelle Cueff
