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Going Beddy-Byes for Art’s Sake
A sleepy citizen grabs some shut-eye at the New York edition of Z’s by the C in 2009.
If they paid people to sleep, plenty of us could catch Zs professionally: magnates making their millions sawing logs. It’s a pipe dream, for sure (unless you take part in some of those sleep research projects where they monitor your brain, but those are no fun). But how about snoozing for art? That’s the idea behind Z’s by the C, a “public napping project” conceived in Calgary in 2008 by artists Mia Rushton and Eric Moschopedis, that comes to Toronto this weekend. Short for Zs (like the kind you catch while enjoying your afternoon siesta) by the City (or by the “sea”), Rushton and Moschopedis conceived of a project involving donning decorative, hand-made sleeping masks and napping in public spaces in response to what Moschopedis describes as “some of the fairly heavy-handed bylaws that were being passed in Calgary.”
“If you sort of added all the bylaws up, certain actions and certain behaviours couldn’t occur in public space,” he continues. “And one of them was sleeping in public. So of course our first reaction was that it was not very nice for the homeless population and the marginalized in our society. And furthermore, for those of us who are tired and just want to have a nap somewhere, it also doesn’t bode well for us.” So naturally, the only appropriate reply was to buck the bylaws and grab a little sack-time in public. The sleep-in was so successful that in 2009, similar events were held in Ottawa, Zürich, and New York City.
Now, Toronto’s destination for experimental art and theatre, The Theatre Centre, has brought Rushton and Moschopedis here, with two public naps being held over the course of the weekend on Lisgar Street, just south of Queen West (smack in the heart of the gentrified-arts-and-exorbitantly-priced-used-clothing district), at the site of a proposed public park. “The project is ultimately about generating public space, and that public space is necessary for the capacity of society to dream about what we want for the future,” Moschopedis waxes. “Without public space, we can’t do that. People can come and dream about what they want that park to be like.”
Some tired bubs in Z’s by the C in Zürich, Switzerland, likely dreaming of tarts and quiches and tasty Zürcher Geschnetzeltes.
In addition to rocking a snooze in public, participants also craft their own sleep masks. It’s something that adds a degree of activity to an event that is otherwise about napping, though Moschopedis still likes to refer to Z’s by the C participants as “inactivists.” Given Toronto’s recent history of more, well, active activism during the G20, and the resultant aftermath, it will be interesting to see how Torontonians come to regard a project that proposes an activist agenda, despite appearing to wakeful observers like little more than a bunch of people sleeping.
Regardless, the support for previous Z’s by the C events held in other major cities (which have seen as many as 100 to 150 people collectively counting sheep) speaks to the apparent interest people have in sleeping, and sleeping defiantly, in public. “It has the potential for everyone to participate,” Moschopedis says. “Nobody has to be a specialist in crafts. And nobody has to be a specialist in sleeping.”
Photos by Bryce Krynski.
Z’s by the C hits the hay at Lisgar Street south of Queen West on Saturday, July 17 and Sunday, July 18 between 2 and 4 p.m. Whether you’re interested in legitimizing your claim over public space, or just want some midday shut-eye, it might be a fun little doze.