We would like to invite you to the performance by patients of the Capriles clinic in collaboration with students of the IBB on the 21st of April, 17:30. It will be the closing event of the artists in residency Domenico Mangano (IT/NL) and Marieke van Rooy (NL) who were guest artists at the IBB over the past four months. The residency of Mangano and Van Rooy will result in an experimental film in which they explored the actuality of the concept of ‘dilution’. Dilution was a radical experiment from the Seventies, which aimed at the emancipation of people with mental health problems by opening up the isolated asylums and having ‘normal’ people living and recreate together with the psychiatric patients. The artists have translated this concept into an artistic intervention by researching the world of imagination of psychiatric patients of the Capriles clinic together with the students of the IBB, which is located on the terrain of the psychiatric institution.

Mangano and Van Rooy established a close relationship with patients and students. Wishes and fantasies of both have been researched through drawings, conversations, letters and the making of personalised clay objects. The results of this project will all come together in a ‘rite of dilution’, which takes place in the chapel on the terrain of the Capriles clinic on the 21st of April, 17:30. Besides this, the artistic process will be presented: the soundtrack of the film, drawings by patients, the clay objects, and a series of letters with sketches that the students have been sending to 25 persons in Curacao. In these letters they describe their experiences during the project. The recipients of the letters (actors, politicians, school teachers, friends and family etc.) are asked to return these letters during the closing event.

For more information, see the blog: www.dilutionincuracao.tumblr.com

The project at the IBB is the last part of a trilogy by Mangano and Van Rooy, which explores the heritage of the anti-psychiatry movement in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The first part of the trilogy, Birds Singing, Sandy Ground (2014), was made during a residency at Kunsthuis SYB, Beetsterzwaag (NL). The second part, Homestead of Dilution (2015), was made during a residency at Het Vijfde Seizoen in Den Dolder (NL).

The trilogy is made possible thanks to the Mondriaan Fund.

About the artists

Domenico Mangano (1976, Palermo, Italy) is a visual artist who lives and works since six years in Amsterdam (NL). In his work he pays attention to micro stories, local communities, and persons that live in the margins of society. He uses video, photography and installations. Mangano has participated in several artist in residencies and his work was shown in numerous international exhibitions.

Marieke van Rooy (1974, Weert, NL) is an art historian. When she is not involved with art, she writes a PhD at the Faculty of the Built Environment from the Technical University of Eindhoven (NL) about the relationship between the democratization movement and the changes in policy and architecture of social housing in the Seventies.