Paper short abstract:

Paper long abstract:

In Poetics of Space (1969), Bachelard talks of building a "dream house" that allows one to daydream in peace. The material aspects are constitutive of the daydream itself - the surfaces, the space, but also the humans who "dreamed it" represent both the source of daydreams and their daily enactment. Dreams, just as their material representations, are often based on cultural gendered imaginaries - a house of dreams can convey feminine "home-making" or masculine "house built by him". I conducted field-work at a living history site in Latvia where historical re-enactment has stopped being a hobby and become a lifestyle choice, a daydream of adventurous masculinities contesting the troubled bread-winner masculinities in the time of crises. In my paper, I will look at how the gendered agency of daydreamers is used in turning dreams into a tangible reality in the form of material objects, space and bodies.