Grey Hope: The Persistence of Melancholy 2006


PROJECT 4.66
TITLE: Grey Hope: The Persistence of Melancholy
EDITORS: Sigrid Sandström & Atopia Projects
FORMAT: Softcover, perfect bound, 210x170mm
PAGES: 134 (29 color pges)
DESIGN: Luke Bulman/Thumb
RELEASE DATE: May 2006
ISBN: 09546156-1-1

CONTRIBUTORS:
Karin Mamma Andersson
Daniel Birnbaum & Anders Olsson
Brian Dillon
Peter Doig
Lucy Gunning
Lars Gustafsson
Per Kirkeby
Jennifer Radden
Hrafnkell Sigurdsson
Richard Wright

Melancholy has a peculiar cultural pedigree. This lineage meanders through the humoral theories of Greek medicine—from where the word originates: melas (black) kholé (bile)—through the romanticism of Keats  and continuing with Freud and Kristeva. As a contemporary notion it is somewhat adrift, and partially eclipsed by the more prosaic descriptions of psychiatric depression. And yet the sense of melancholy persists; its mellower existential reflective form is a gentle but penetrating sadness that  may even be an actively sought companion. This book is an idiosyncratic compendium of texts and artists’ work that relates to an understanding of melancholy as a contributing essence to a rounded psychic landscape. It is in these instances that melancholy functions as a filter or mediator for experience; it generates a peculiar and particular related-ness to the world. It is at once deeply internal but often crucially intertwined with our relationship to landscape and nature. Grey Hope aims for melancholy to be culturally understood as an active aspect of the psyche and not an affliction requiring elevation.

Text and image from: Atopia Projekts; http://atopiaprojects.org/4.66.html

See Sample chapter written by Sigrid Sandström; http://atopiaprojects.org/4.66/4.66_6-7.html

Press:
Discussed (In Swedish) http://www.svd.se/dynamiskt/kultur/did_14468884.asp

Reviewed in PALETTEN #266 NR 4 2006