Datura stramonium
/7
- Datura stramonium
- 1996
- video, b&w, sound
- 6min, 59sec
The black-and-white film "Datura stramonium," one of Lois Weinberger's very few filmic works, shows a common thorn apple—a plant that is highly toxic in all its parts, capable of causing hallucinations, and used in many places as part of spiritual rituals. A floating sensation is said to be among its intoxicating effects, which is why medieval Europeans viewed it as belonging to the realm of so-called witchcraft.
William S. Burroughs experimented with the thorn apple and stated that the feeling it induced was “like your head flying off .” This is possibly a reference to the state known as levitation, echoes of which can be found in those fairytales that consistently portray witches as flying through the air on broomsticks.
It was on this basis that the Catholic Church transfigured the plant into a symbol of evil. Lois Weinberger, for his part, dealt with the thorn apple in various works and also collected its seeds.
For his film, he guided the camera just like an animal possessed of entirely different sensory organs and interests might approach a member of this plant species. Backed up by the original sound, the camera’s objective pushes its way into the plant—sniffing and attacking it with impatient motions, searching it with a bored air, then breaking and trampling its desiccated stalks until the seeds roll out of their capsules. IN a similar vein, the temporal boundaries of this investigation—with the video’s duration of 6'58"—approximate an animal’s attention span. F.W.
William S. Burroughs experimented with the thorn apple and stated that the feeling it induced was “like your head flying off .” This is possibly a reference to the state known as levitation, echoes of which can be found in those fairytales that consistently portray witches as flying through the air on broomsticks.
It was on this basis that the Catholic Church transfigured the plant into a symbol of evil. Lois Weinberger, for his part, dealt with the thorn apple in various works and also collected its seeds.
For his film, he guided the camera just like an animal possessed of entirely different sensory organs and interests might approach a member of this plant species. Backed up by the original sound, the camera’s objective pushes its way into the plant—sniffing and attacking it with impatient motions, searching it with a bored air, then breaking and trampling its desiccated stalks until the seeds roll out of their capsules. IN a similar vein, the temporal boundaries of this investigation—with the video’s duration of 6'58"—approximate an animal’s attention span. F.W.