The video above is a short trailer. The full video “Pervitin Power” is 6:37 long.
Pervitin was the drug for soldiers in Nazi Germany. It is known today as Crystal Meth. In the video I take on the role of the soldier. After simulating a Pervitin shot, a change of consciousness takes place. Animations move through the space like hallucinations, culminating into a violent climax.
Screenings, selections and exhibitions:
• February 23, 2023: Screening of 12 videos by Maria Korporal in the context of Premio Borgo Video, curated by gallery La scala d’oro, Sala Dionigi (Chiesa Valdese), Rome, Italy.
• November 10, 2022 – January 7, 2023: außer ich – inner ich / part 2, INSELGALERIE Berlin.
• August 29, 2022: The Short Nights of Berlin, Kino Central Berlin.
• August 11, 2022: FilMuzik, Bird Production, Gioiosa Ionica RC, Italy.
• July 23 – September 6, 2022: Eclectic Dreams III, video art program curated by David King on VisualcontainerTV.
• April 2, 2022: TCA’s Open Screen, Taos Center for the Arts, Taos, New Mexico, USA.
• March 10-27, 2022: T-Short Animated Film Online Festival 2022, online.
• November 1, 2021: ESSENCE/ABSENCE, Pavilion of The Wrong Biennale n°5, curated by Matteo Campulla.
• October 29 – November 14, 2021: Verfremdung, Gallery VBK, Berlin.
Pervitin was officially prescribed for soldiers and certainly contributed to the success of the Blitzkrieg and subsequent German invasions. But over time, the addiction and side effects of the drug became fatal to the German army: people, while strongly addicted, experienced the symptoms we know today such as nausea, hallucinations, and diminution of cognitive capacities, anxiety and depression.
To read more about the subject: https://thesecuritydistillery.org/all-articles/pervitin-how-drugs-transformed-warfare-in-1939-45
Pervitin is known in our time as Crystal Meth. As most people know, it is a nowadays an illegal drug which brings misery to many people.
“Meth” is also the Jewish word for “death”, and came to my mind in connection with the Prague legend of the Golem, which has fascinated me for decades. In Jewish folklore the Golem is an animated anthropomorphic being, which is entirely created from inanimate matter (usually clay or mud). It is brought to life by writing the word EMETH, meaning “truth”, on its forehead. To disable the Golem, one can erase the E from EMETH, creating METH – “death”. The legend of the Golem inspired the Czech Karel Čapek to write R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), the 1920 play that gave the word „robot“ to the world.
The formula METH-EMETH functions as a mechanical method to simulate a consciousness at will. It strongly reminds me of the Nazis practices and of other war leaders, who intend to manipulate their soldiers with narcotics, stirring up their will to assassinate. The drug puts them in a state of trance and less aware of the atrocities they commit. They act as non-human robots do. However, we ought to call this behaviour inhuman.
In my work “Pervitin Power” I try to express these thoughts. The video has been recorded in 360° in a room of the Schwerbelastungskörper, a large cylinder made of concrete in Berlin. It was built in 1941 to study the feasibility of constructing large buildings on the area’s sandy bottom, in preparation for the planned construction nearby of a massive Triumphal Arch, that Hitler wanted to build for his Germania city project. The arch was never built, but the cylinder is still there. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerbelastungsk%C3%B6rper
In this room charged with history, I take on the role of the soldier and discover that my clone is sitting opposite me. After simulating a Pervitin shot and putting on a gas mask (an original WWII item), a change of consciousness takes place. Concepts such as TRUTH, HUMAN, ROBOT, POWER, ALIEN are written on the foreheads of me and my clone. From these emerge animated drawings and images. They move through the space like hallucinations and culminate into a violent climax.
title: Pervitin Power
technique: Experimental 360° video and animation
length: 6’37”
year: 2021
music: “Unmistaken Abstract Marching Band” by Edoardo Pistolesi Somigli*
concept, camera, cast, drawing, animation, effects: Maria Korporal
© Maria Korporal 2021
* Edoardo Pistolesi Somigli is co-founder & Station Manager @ Dots Unlimited Radio, a multichannel webradio dedicated to free music, sound research and new forms of communication and language: www.duradio.net
Knob-twiddler in the field of experimental music, fond of all possible links between sound and psychology, undergoing multiple ambient/noise/psychoacoustic creative projects plus -within the scientific community- currently approaching sounds and frequencies to be applied in several alternative cognitive-behavioral therapies in the treatment of various forms of OCD, freely and originally inspired by some tests conducted by Jean Piaget in the 40s of last century. He has also collaborated with Maria Korporal in the projects The Mind’s Egg, ZoOm into my Room and Is a dot a black hole?
Hello Maria, my friend Darko Duilo mentioned your work to me.
We would like to present some of your creations on our blog: Friends of the Armchair Traveller.
You can check us out on:
https://petertammer.blogspot.com/
As we’re launching into a new year it would be wonderful to introduce your work to our friends, it’s not a large group, currently about 35 readers, but occasionally out posts receive up to 100 views.
Hello Peter, thank you very much! I wrote you an email.