"The Blessing is a narrative brought together from sections of video made independently over a period of a year and sections that were shot on location at Sketch gallery in London, who commissioned the work. It develops observations I made of the theological positions or perspectives Fra Angelico asserts in his frecsos and altar pieces, and the narrative and iconographic devices he uses to do so. The Blessing is influenced in particular by Fra Angelico's The Mocking of Christ (1439), a theme which was conventionalised in the late Renaissance with images of fleshly suffering, is here shown as an event in the eternity of the soul. Christ on a simple throne remains impervious to the phantom heads and hands of abusive soldiers as though they are a dream, a whim. The figures of St. Dominic and The Virgin Mary to the left and right are contemplative, co-existent in eternity on a plain of meditation. The trials of the flesh are distant in this place without time and without location. This painting provided the central premise for the Blessing; the invocation of a place out of time and space where sacred figures channel experiences in de kaleidoscopes (transcendent objects par excellence) both as a camera attachment and as props in the film.

"The main texts at the base of the film's narrative are the History of St. Teresa of Avila in Her Own Words (1555), in which she talks of her moments of ecstasy as 'The Blessing', and an account (sound recording) given by the musician Kenichi Iwasa about a near death experience he had had a few months before with a drug overdose. Both talk about out of body experiences, the pain of ecstasy, visions of holy figures, and struggling against physical impulses. What struck me especially was the similarity in the unfolding of the events described as 'levels' or 'stages' in both of these narratives. It is by following these 'levels' that I have created a structure for the events in the film. Rather than filming illustrative scenarios based on the accounts of Teresa and Iwasa, I chose images which relate to a wider idea of the miraculous, and of the body as a site of departure for the spirit.

"The Blessing was first shown as a 12 channel, 360 degree installation and later as a single channel edit. The musical score composed for the film by Kenichi Iwasa, with whom I also worked on the concept of the film, is also a collage of fragments including gospel music and electronic and prerecorded sounds." - C.H