As soon as I'm left alone
the Devil wanders into my soul
And I pretend to myself.
I go out to the old mile stone
Insanely expecting you to come there knowing
That I wait for you there [...]
Because all of my being is now pining”
- P.J. Harvey (White Chalk)
On 12 September 1994 Daniël Engelbrecht's ageing foster parents reported their 17 year old son missing. According to Pieter and Ragel Vermeulen, the boy became increasingly withdrawn during the two weeks leading up to his disappearance on 10 September. He “...started working through the night on his strange notes more often.. not caring for much else, eating very little, hardly ever leaving his bedroom”, noted Mrs. Vermeulen in the police report. The puzzle of Daniël's disappearance shocked the little town of Barendsdorp, firstly through Pieter and Ragel Vermeulen's sorrow and the fruitless search parties of the first few weeks, and then through the unprecedented number of visitors on pilgrimage to the boy's bedroom – When Ragel noted the miraculous disappearance of her severe psoriasis after touching the boy's linen to a neighbor, it wasn't long before the boy's room became a revered site for all manner of religious and occult fanatics. After expert analysis of his diaries revealed Daniël's apparent delusional psychosis to be the result of his latent homosexuality, and his inability to relate to others, he became somewhat of a cult figure in the gay community, further complicating the Barendsdorp “pilgrim problem”. Daniël's body was never recovered. No foul play suspected. His story forgotten in view of the important events that changed South-Africa that year.
STATEMENT
Richard Corliss describes adolescence as “...a time of grand and awful responsibilities, the transformation of the body before the mind is ready, the queasy realization that every decision can have ecstatic or cataclysmic consequences”. This period of human development is the subject of the first collaboration between my partner Werner Ungerer & myself: The ecstasy of St. Daniël Engelbrecht. The first part of this project took the form of an installation, a fictional recreation of a teenage boy's bedroom. The project is inspired by the uncanny similarity of our experiences growing up in small town South Africa, and our mutual interest in visual narrative. The installation tells the story of a teenager's increasing inability to consolidate reality and his dream-world/fantasies through video, drawing, found objects, text and calligraphy.
This project was presented as part of the group exhibition "Swallow my pride" (Curated by Margaret Stone, Dale Washkansky, Lizza Littlewort & William Martin) at blank projects, Cape Town.
