Shelley Hirsch

A film on Saint Teresa that leads us through an unnervingly authentic extreme state of religious and sexual ecstasy. With the central image of the statue of Saint Teresa of Avila in Rome, together with glimpses of colour-saturated flower gardens, the Crucifixion and Baroque plasterwork, we listen to the gulping and frenetically clipped voice of the ‘saint’ pouring out her rapturous lament, attempting to express the unsayable. The film’s soundtrack combines a spoken voice by Nina Danino and performed vocals by New York experimental singer Shelley Hirsch.

Manipulated images of water in motion give way to "A ‘Jasper-Johns-like’ digital ode to the Flag– a prescient and expressionistic response to the American political climate of the late 80’s when we witnessed attempts to infringe on Free Speech by denying any critical political use of the American Flag and by the abridgement of artistic freedom [...] The soundtrack, composed by the artist in collaboration with Brooks Williams at Harmonic Ranch, builds to a telemetric electro-frenzy, incorporating fragmented melodic strains of American patriotic songs along with Shelley Hirsch’s near-hysterical vocals as the image of the flag ‘whites out’" -SH. A strobing, probing and unsettling experience.

Joe Wild, a virtuoso of vocal effects and acoustic body noises who earns his living driving a taxi. In his travels, he encounters the experimental vocalist Shelley Hirsch. Together they flee the Nothing Human sound studio, whose engineers have been attempting to steal their voices, and they stroll off into the sunset warbling sweet nothings at each other.