Cursed

uses a metaphor of a haunted house to understand the self-sabotaging mind.

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 5
Cursed was co-commissioned by the Explorers Film Club & Christoph Merian Foundation, curated by Benedikt Wyss and Samuel Leuenberger.

Cursed has entered the Blue Knowledge Art Collection in The Netherlands
2025, Blue Art Knowledge Collection, Amsterdam
2021, Wroclaw contemporary Art Museum, Poland
2021, Elysia, Basel, Switzerland
2020, Atelier Mondial, Basel, Switzerland

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 Verkade 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 Club Elysia’s empty dance floor Cursed pulls the viewer right into the narrative’s parallel dimension and brings together hand-drawn and digital animation, green screen performance, poetic writing and electronic music production.