Created during the first lockdown, Cursed focuses on the issues of mental health and confinement using a metaphor of a haunted house to represent a self-sabotaging mind. Inspired by her time in residence at Atelier Mondial based in Dreispitz, Basel Verkade took the idea of the transition zone to a more internal psychological understanding of sorts.

“In Cursed the role of the protagonist is performed by an inner demon that shapeshifts its way through the endless trapdoors of a haunted mind. The subliminal dimensions revealed in Cursed are hard to pinpoint and portray the human brain as an inconsistent place. This led me to develop the unreliable narrator of the piece; an authoritative inner voice with a seductive appearance that guides and misleads the viewer through despair.”

It forthrightly references to Alice in Wonderland’s grinning Cheshire cat and Beckett’s Not I theatre monologue in which a disembodied mouth alludes to psychological despair and denial. Presented at Elysia’s empty dance floor Cursed pulls the viewer right into the narrative’s parallel dimension and brings together handdrawn and digital animation, green screen performance, poetic writing and electronic music production.

Cursed, 2019
single channel video installation, 05:00 min. looped
HD projection, sound system, red curtains, cardboard site specific set design, variable size
Edition of 2 including installation, edition of 3 video excluding installation

Cursed was co-commissioned by the Explorers Film Club
(curated by Benedikt Wyss and Samuel Leuenberger) and Christoph Merian Foundation.
The first edition of Cursed has entered the Blue Knowledge Art Collection in The Netherlands

Above: selection of drawings for Cursed, 29,6 x 41,8 cm,
gouache and aquarel on acid free Hahnemuller paper
Left to right: Open For Business, Squeeze, Neural Pathways, Hereditary