Stories from Kings County Hospital / Mirthe Berentsen..

"'Stories from Kings County Hospital' by Mirthe Berentsen, published by Werkplaats Typografie and designed by Sarah Cleeremans is a carefully composed play made out of a fragmentary collection of stories, poems, pictures and observations. The publication culminates a six-month stay at the mental health department of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York — on invitation by the Dutch Beautiful Distress Foundation, which uses art and literature in an attempt to open up the world of psychiatry. To achieve this, Berentsen investigates the reminiscent and romanticised clichés of the correlation between art and madness, the psychiatric hospital as a biotope for American politics and escaping reality by creating a counter-narrative. The result is one in which the complexity of things converge: madness, gender, the limitations of care, the inevitability of death and the power of language."--From author's website.