"A collection of writings, essays, and calligrams, framed behind movement through the Encircling Lake, a Ho-Chunk way of describing the boundaries of the earth. The calligrams take the shape of effigy mounds and intaglios, and the writings maneuver between the complicated relationships of family, identity, and their intersections within Hopinka’s video work"--Author's website.

"In these engaging, challenging and beguiling dialogues, Pamela Cohn expertly draws from her subjects, personal biography and conceptual intent, process and nearly subconscious motivation, personal revelation and political mission. The result is a work that not only provides a road map to the furthest regions of cinematic possibility in the early 21st century but one whose spirited back-and-forth inspires the reader to think anew about artistic possibility." —Scott Macaulay, editor-in-chief of Filmmaker Magazine “Pamela Cohn has curated and conducted a series of interviews that simultaneously invite you to turn the page, and pause for a moment of reverie. Her interviews furrow the grounds where sensibilities become cinema, and attitudes become forms." —Luke Moody Lucid Dreaming is an unprecedented global collection of discussions with documentary and experimental filmmakers, giving film and video its rightful place alongside the written word as an essential medium for conveying the most urgent concerns in contemporary arts and politics. In these long-form conversations, film curator and arts journalist Cohn draws out the thinking of some of the most intriguing creators behind the rapidly developing movement of moving-image nonfiction. The collection features individuals from a variety of backgrounds who encounter the world, as Cohn says, “through a creative lens based in documentary practice.” Their inspirations encompass queer politics, racism, identity politics, and activism. The featured artists come from a multiplicity of countries and cultures including the U.S., Finland, Serbia, Syria, Kosovo, China, Iran, and Australia. Among those Cohn profiles and converses with are Karim Aïnouz, Khalik Allah, Maja Borg, Ramona Diaz, Samira Elagoz, Sara Fattahi, Dónal Foreman, Ja’Tovia Gary, Ognjen Glavonic, Barbara Hammer, Sky Hopinka, Gürcan Keltek, Adam and Zack Khalil, Khavn, Kaltrina Krasniqi, Roberto Minervini, Terence Nance, Orwa Nyrabia, Chico Pereira, Michael Robinson, J. P. Sniadecki, Brett Story, Deborah Stratman, Maryam Tafakory, Mila Turajlic, Lynette Wallworth, Travis Wilkerson, and Shengze Zhu. Can nonfiction film be defined? How close to reality can or should documentary storytelling be, and is film and video in its less restrictive iterations “truer” than traditional narratives? How can a story be effectively conveyed? As they consider these and many other questions, these passionate, highly articulate filmmakers will inspire not only cinema enthusiasts, but activists and artists of all stripes.

This expanded second edition of Reclaiming Artistic Research explores artistic research in dialogue with 24 artists worldwide, reclaiming it from academic associations of the term. Embracing artists' dynamic engagement with other fields, it foregrounds the material, spatial, embodied, organizational, choreographic, and technological ways of knowing and unknowing specific to contemporary artistic inquiry. The second edition features a new text by the author and four new artist dialogues to reflect on the changing stakes of artistic research in the wake of the global pandemic, a widespread reckoning with social justice, the growing role of artificial intelligence, and the urgent reality of climate change. LUCY COTTER (*1973, Ireland) is a writer, curator, and artist. She was Curator of the Dutch Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale, 2017, and Curator in Residence at Oregon Center for Contemporary Art 2021–22. The inaugural director of the Master Artistic Research, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, Cotter has lectured internationally, most recently at Portland State University. She holds a project residency at Stelo Arts and Culture Foundation 2023-24.