Dream Palace: Cadaqués
May 2026
“One day it will have to be officially admitted
— Salvador Dalí
“One day it will have to be officially admitted
that what we have christened reality is an even
greater illusion than the world of dreams.”
— Salvador Dalí🐟🚲
🐟🚲
Dream Palace Cadaques was a week-long surrealist theatrical game, inviting you to step into the dream, on Isla S'Aranella, just off the coast of Cadaqués in Catalonia. You could participate for the whole week or just a few days, helping create a collective, unscripted Exquisite Corpse performance through all your chance interactions with our Architects, a varied group of crazy dreamers and highly experienced dramaturges guiding you through deep play, ceremony, performance, awareness, sound, and vision.
Dream Palace Cadaqués built toward one collective Exquisite Corpse performance on the 30th of May, 2026, the whole residency folding dream by dream, scene by scene, toward that single unscripted night.
Inspired by the Exquisite Corpse, a collaborative method born from the Surrealists in which each contributor adds to a work without seeing what came before, passing it on blind, the devising process was structured so that every scene of the final work was blind to the others, with an innovative writing process creating the seams between each part of the play. The result was something no single mind could have planned or predict.
Dream Palace Cadaqués built toward one collective Exquisite Corpse performance on the 30th of May, 2026, the whole residency folding dream by dream, scene by scene, toward that single unscripted night.
Inspired by the Exquisite Corpse, a collaborative method born from the Surrealists in which each contributor adds to a work without seeing what came before, passing it on blind, the devising process was structured so that every scene of the final work was blind to the others, with an innovative writing process creating the seams between each part of the play. The result was something no single mind could have planned or predict.
Chance on Trial
At the end of his life, Dalí convened philosophers and scientists at his Theatre-Museum to debate chance versus determinism. This event was called Proceso al Azar (Chance on Trial). He watched remotely, as he was unwell and nearing the end of his life. He would later be buried there, unknown to him at the time, in that same theatre, beneath an unmarked stone, trampled daily by tourists.
As a nod to this event, to Dalí's presence in Cadaqués, and to our conviction that Cadaqués is the true birthplace of Surrealism, a place artists once made pilgrimage to in order to learn from a local woman, Lydia de Cadaqués, Dream Palace Cadaqués surrenders its shape to chance. Each day, an artistic altar to chance was created, used to guide each participant's movement through the devising process, drawn by lottery into sessions, scenes, and dreaming processes led by our Architects and Residents.