3am Wonder, Paranoia and the Restless Night

Does 3am represent the current zeitgeist? At this dread hour, there's doubt that the day will ever come, a sense of reaching the nadir, of being in a dark place. The mind falters and slides. It's a time for nightmares, ghouls and nocturnal creatures, of loneliness and death. It's the shadow side of our daylight existence, lawless and demonic. But 3am is also a time for refuge and release, for dreams and adventure, creativity and imagination.

This book accompanies an exhibition of the same name, curated by Angela Kingston, and features work by over 20 contemporary artists who step into the night to create paintings, drawings, videos, photographs and other artworks that reflect this strange, numinous hour, between the last traces of day and the first glimmer of morning. 3am: Wonder, paranoia and the restless night drips with insomnia. It needs to keep different hours. It is an adolescent running free, a man alone and afraid, a woman gazing at the cosmos, an unexpected coupling, an emboldened fox.

Edited by Bryan Biggs, the book combines images with texts by writers, from Robert Louis Stevenson to Robert Macfarlane, who have conjectured the far night as something extraordinary, and includes a new short story by Ailsa Cox. Artists featured include Francis Alÿs, Jordan Baseman, Sandra Cinto, Dorothy Cross, Nathan Mabry, Paul Rooney, Fred Tomaselli and Tom Wood.

Bryan Biggs is Artistic Director of The Bluecoat. He is co-editor with John Belchem of Liverpool City of Radicals (LUP, 2011); with Helen Tookey of Malcolm Lowry: from the Mersey to the World (LUP, 2009), and with Julie Sheldon of Art in a City Revisited (LUP, 2009).

Foreword - Bryan Biggs
Introduction: Curating the exhibition '3am: Wonder, paranoia and the restless night' - Angela Kingston
Artists' images: Francis Alÿs, Tonico Lemos Auad, Jordan Basemen, Sandra Cinto, Dorothy Cross, Antoine Agata, Dornith Doherty, Anthony Goicolea, Marc Hulson, Rachel Kneebone, Nathan Mabry, Michael Palm and Willi Dorner, Hirsch Perlman, Ed Pien, Lucy Reynolds, Sophy Rickett, Paul Rooney, Anj Smith, Fred Tomaselli, Danny Treacy, Bettina Von Zwehl, Tom Wood
Artists' biographies
Photography and the Night - Sara-Jayne Parsons
Extract from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes - Robert Louis Stevenson
Extract from The Powers of Insomnia - Elisabeth Bronfen
Hope Fades For the Hostages - Ailsa Cox
Extract from The 24 Hour Society - Leon Kreitzman
Extract from The Wild Places - Robert Macfarlane
Dear Mariella - Mariella Frostrup
'I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day' - Gerard Manley Hopkins
3am Playlist