May 2006
This belongs to nettles. The video installation in the gallery has an educational purpose, particularly for nettles. They are installed as live flowers in flowerpots directly in front of the videos. Thus the nettles become the first audience to absorb the information. And so, I educate the nettles about themselves. As part of the project I handed out the flowerpots of nettles at the installation. Those interested would ask for the plants themselves, and show great interest in having the nettle at home. I handed out five of them at the opening.
The first video of Hexenschuss takes place in a doctor’s surgery, giving an illustrative example of how nettles can be used for the treatment of lumbago, or hexenschuss (the translation from German would be “wizard’s shot”). I intentionally manipulate the information and promote the use of nettles for hexenschuss; despite the fact that the positive effects are unverified, nobody dares to question it.
In the second video Nettles in Gardens I transplant nettles from a secluded street in Vienna
to a decorative garden of the city. I break the given hierarchy and connect the so-called low with the high, without specifying of what is low and what is high.
The photo-documentary Nettles Clean the Blood shows how I put nettles among other flowers in the flower shop and on the window ledge of a house in Vienna. Each flowerpot has a label saying: Brennesel – reinigt blut / Nettles clean the blood /. This way I give people a clear piece of information and wait for them to deal with it. The result of the project in Vienna was that nobody wanted the nettles.
Eva Jiřičková, 2006
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