Domenico Mangano & Marieke van Rooy

Description

Tent. Eindhoven, Onomatopee, 24-06-2017, 30-07-2017. - Who do we allow to live among us and how do we exclude? With variable intensity the question whether psychiatric patients and people with intellectual disabilities can, may or should live among ‘normal’ people has been a subject of debate since the beginning of the twentieth century. The project Homestead of Dilution looks at the Nieuw Dennendal experiment (1969-1974) where psychologist Carel Muller and architect Frans van Klingeren devised an alternative model for ‘deranged’ and ‘healthy’ people to live and play together on the secure property of a psychiatric institution. Nieuw Dennendal, widely considered to be the most ground-breaking experiment in Dutch post-war health care, has become relevant again as more and more mentally distressed people appear in the streets. 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?