Saint Victoria's Incorruptible Body

Expanded Cinema Magic Lantern & Noise Duo featuring Melissa Ferrari & DYMPHNA (Sam Gurry)

Select Performances:

San Diego Underground Film Festival - Tenth Avenue Arts Center (August 2018)
MULTI CULT 6: Fun & Evil - Lyric Hyperion Theatre (October 2018)
Ann Arbor Film Festival OFF! The Screen (April 2019)

Saint Victoria was a woman unmarked by hesitance. She was venerated as a martyr after being stabbed in the heart by a spurned would be suitor. Though her essence ascended to Heaven, her body remained on this coil, unspoiled and encased in wax.

Saint Victoria’s Incorruptible Body is an expanded cinema performance duo manifesting the spirit of the late martyr externalizing both her pain and pure faith through a mixture of sound and sight. Melissa Ferrari provides visuals through a menagerie of magic lanterns utilizing both handmade and antique slides with imagery ranging from Phantasmagoria to the cosmos. Sam Gurry, as DYMPHNA, blends voice and guitar through a variety of effects pedals initiating an impassioned wall of sound at times both melancholy and incensed. DYMPHNA thrashes, screams, and settles into a place that can only be found by those not looking for it.

The performances take the form of a loosely improvised Twenty Five to Thirty minute set consisting of three emotional acts. We are born, we die, and then we ascend, joining Saint Victoria in that place of piety and hope in the stars. Many of Ferrari’s handmade slides incorporate moving elements, water, or dyes drawing the eyes to their ephemerality. Several, including a slide of Saint Victoria herself, decay slightly with each use and will continue to do so until she disappears all together. Saint Victoria’s Incorruptible Body is for anyone who has hoped, believed, dreamed, or doubted their ability to do such. Viewers engaged through the meeting of visuals and music working together, sculpting three distinctive arcs of feeling.