Dates: 25–28 April 2024

Venue: Skärholmen Center, Stockholm.

Supermarket 2024 theme: Dream On

The Sandman is coming, it’s time to sleep; lest he plucks out your eyes – eats up your dreams.

Sandman is not your favourite night companion. He sneaks up on you when you cannot sleep and throws sand in your eyes as a punishment to make them bleed and fall out, and collects them to feed his hungry beak-nosed children who sit perched on the crescent moon. Or so goes the tale of the Sandman based on an old German saying and popularised by E. T. A. Hoffmann in the short story Der Sandmann. There are more bedtime-friendly versions of Sandman’s character, where he sprinkles good dreams into the children’s eyes, but dream on – we all know what he really is after.

For centuries it has been thought that dreams are channelled through us by gods to show us their will and design. Alternatively, dreams could just be caused by indigestion, as Aristotle pointed out. Wherever they come from, wherever they go, what would we be left with if we couldn't dream up better worlds – ones we cannot reach, but that reach inside of us immensely?

The capacity to dream is one of the most beautiful gifts we have. Dreams predict the future and shape the past. Dreaming is limitless and ultimate; it disregards the circumstantial and summons inspiration, love, terror and beauty in the split of a second, but for eternity. We can laugh at the unrealistic dreamer: the artist, the poet, the longing lover, but with a pinch of envy for a vision which escapes us, for a universe we cannot inhabit.

With Supermarket 2024’s theme Dream On we evoke both your inner dreamer and inner sceptic. Let them converse and fight. Time is too short to not dream as much as we can, however brazen our dreams may be. Protect your dreams at all cost; listen and challenge them, but do not let anyone steal them. Dream up your castle, and let it collapse gracefully.