In a special issue, produced in partnership with MAAT, Leonorana magazine presents a series of conversations that place mental health at centre stage in understanding contemporary culture. They articulate an alternative to the healthcare model that treats individuals in total isolation from each other and seeks instead to highlight the role community, as an environment offering acceptance and a sense of belonging, can play in the care process. These dialogues in different voices – published in English on MAAT Extended between August and November 2023 – bear witness to experiences of community, mutual care and happy interdependence currently being practised in the fields of art and culture.

This special edition of Leonorana is a response to an invitation from maat to explore “care” as a theme – one that was touched on before in its fourth issue, released during the pandemic. Recognising the breadth and nuances of contemporary thinking about care, this editorial series – conceived by Isabel Carvalho and boasting the participation of Susana Caló, Nina Paim, Andreia Magalhães, the Pedreira collective and the Kosmicare collective – seeks to shine a spotlight on ways of living and thinking collectively, and allows us to see the ways mental health care practice asks us (and this is a good thing) to exist in relation to other beings, be they human or otherwise.

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Symptoms Are the World Speaking, with Susana Caló

It Turned Out Pretty Well, with Nina Paim

A Broader Field, with Andreia Magalhães

The name Leonorana comes from Ana Hatherly’s book Um Calculador de Improbabilidades (Quimera, 2001) and the magazine is a tribute to this author. It resumes and updates the central focus of her work, namely concerning the study and experimental practice of the complementarity between verbal and visual languages. Each issue of the annual magazine addresses a different theme, which is defined in dialogue with a guest editor, with whom the editorial methodology and orientation are also outlined. These are proposed to guest authors, who accept to share their interests, processes and accomplished works. The essay is the preferred genre as it is the one that is most adequate to the translation of the thought in formation and that best allows to undertake speculative approaches.

* “We Care A Lot” is a song by the American band Faith No More, released in 1985, and also the title of their debut album released in the same year.