The concept of ’dilution’ – bringing together healthy and mentally ill people to overcome the formation of a polarised and hierarchical society – was developed during the Nieuw Dennendal experiment at a Dutch mental healthcare institute in the 1970s.
With this book we broaden the scope of what dilution could mean today, viewed through various historical, artistic, sociological and philosophical lenses. Could the historical concept of dilution be deployed as a contemporary artistic principle and be rediscovered as a means to achieve peaceful cohabitation? Does it have the potential to bridge and unify radical forms of otherness as part of an artistic process or perhaps life in general?
This publication comes out of the artistic research for the video work Homestead of Dilution, and is the result of an artist-in residency by Domenico Mangano & Marieke van Rooy at Het Vijfde Seizoen (located on the grounds of the mental health institute Altrecht in Den Dolder, The Netherlands), from January to May 2015.
The project The Dilution Adhesives (2017), was made specially for this publication. Each copy contains a selection of stickers with images and illustrations from the Nieuw Dennendal archive, which is part of the collection of the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.
The publication is part of the Dilution Project, which is developed by Domenico Mangano & Marieke van Rooy in collaboration with Kunsthuis Syb, Het Vijfde Seizoen, Instituto Buena Bista, Onomatopee and the Mondriaan Fund. The publication was presented for the first time at the exhibition Homestead of Dilution at the Nomas Foundation in Rome, from 3 May – 1 August 2017, curated by Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk, and presented at the exhibition space of Onomatopee in Eindhoven, July 2017.
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Editors: Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk, Domenico Mangano & Marieke van Rooy
Authors / contributors: Esther Vossen, John Foot, Ilaria Gianni, Aaron Schuster
Copy editors: Billy Nolan, Leila Rejali
Translators: Billy Nolan, Oliver Dorostkar
Graphic designer: Bardhi Haliti
Cover images: Nieuw Dennendal Archive, Collection IIISG, Amsterdam
This publication was made possible with support from Het Vijfde Seizoen / Altrecht GGZ, the Mondriaan Fund, Magazzino, Nomas Foundation
- Type
- softcover
- Dimensions
- 206 x 133 mm / 8.1 x 5.2 inches portrait
- Pages
- 132
- ISBN
- 978-94-91677-67-0
- Editor
- Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk, Domenico Mangano & Marieke van Rooy
- Author
- various
- Graphic
- Bardhi Haliti