So Aaron told me last night about one of his old friends from Virginia Beach that was in towne visiting. His name is Brock Enright, he lives in NYC, and he gets paid $1500 to kidnap people. Isn’t that weird?

But honestly, I looked him up on the internet and it’s for real. Check out this BBC News article about him. Here’s the audio bit of it.

I found his personal website here. So far, only the VIDEOGAMES section is open (that’s what the business is called), and even it still has a lot of pending features. I can’t wait til the site is finished. I am so intrigued to see the rest of his work.

I found the following comment on a site called bud.com:

I wandered into this guy’s opening a couple months ago. It was at a new gallery in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. My roomate and I were on a bike ride and it looked like there was free champagne to be had, so we took a look. Enright had set up the interior of the gallery space with a series of installations fetishizing pre-adolescent acts of violence and rebellion. It was alternately a bit scary and hillarious (esp. the videos of himself at a young age playing ninja/rockstar for the camera).

They had a TV monitor there playing clips from the kidnapping series, which he appropriately enough titled “Videogames.” He does a lot with masks and costumes to fit the client/victims taste. There was one clip with someone in a frighteningly detailed goblin mask bursting through a false wall in an apartment to tackle a victim. Another featured cigarette burns. It gave me the creeps in a big way. There was allegedly a kidnapping to go down at the opening that night, but I unfortunately had plans.

Enright is a strange and unassuming presence for someone who plumbs the dark side. He seems very average, just kind of lurking around the space, eavsdropping on people’s conversations about the work. It took me a while to realize he was the guy… I expected someone more outwardly strange-looking.

Just goes to show, it takes all kinds. And yes, there was champagne.

ps - He also directed a stage version of “Debbie Does Dallas”