Puck Verkade

Verkade’s work emerges from the depths of personal experience. In this case, pregnancy and childbirth led her to some major existential questions. What moral and emotional responsibility do you bear when you bring a child into a world that is vulnerable and burdened by social and ecological crises? Verkade describes her journey towards motherhood as a psychedelic trip. Through the guise of her alter ego, who makes an equally psychedelic journey into the depths of the earth, she translates existential doubts into an installation combining performance, animation, lyrical narration and musical composition. 

The narrative begins darkly, full of worry. The warning “Your actions have consequences, gardener” seems to go unheeded by the human trying to tame nature. But Verkade draws hope from regeneration, gives her alter ego a choice, and so allows a new worldview to be born from the depths, one in which humankind cares for the more-than-human world and where harmonious co-existence becomes possible.