Anne Glassner / Luca Serasini
fashion/swimoutfits: hybrid.dessous /Amelie Schlemmer
text: Marietta Kesting
photos: studio hemdwerder
For the 2026 Water Biennale in Fürstenfeld, Floating Dreams is an immersive, performative installation by Anne Glassner and Luca Serasini that brings the realm of dreams into public space.
The starting point is a collection of water dreams that Anne Glassner has been archiving for years. These dreams are made accessible to visitors via old analog floating telephones by Luca Serasini: whoever picks up the receiver is immersed in poetic soundscapes that hover between memory, imagination, and the subconscious. Placed in changing rooms or throughout the city, the telephones serve as interfaces between the waking state and the dream world—as fragile connections that open up spaces of individual and collective experience.
The installation invites visitors to pause and listen. Multilayered narratives, fleeting images, and emotional landscapes unfold, raising questions about reality and fiction, memory and desire. What role does water play in dreams? How does perception change in the transition between the inner and outer worlds? And how can communication in public space be reimagined?
The phones react to movement, begin to ring, and trigger sound recordings when picked up. The deliberate use of analog devices points to a slower form of communication—location-bound, physical, time-consuming—and serves as a counterpoint to the constant availability of digital connectivity.
The opening featured a live performance with a workshop-like character: Anne Glassner guided participants through perceptual exercises and invited visitors to engage with the work physically and sensually. Everyone was invited to swim toward the phones, linger on air mattresses, or approach a dreamlike state.
Floating Dreams combines installation and performance, intimacy and public space—and opens up a space where collective dreamscapes can be experienced.
