Jesse Jones’ new film, performance and sculptural installation, The Tower, is the second part in a trilogy beginning with Tremble Tremble (commissioned for the Irish Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017). The Tower finds its beginning point not in the witch but the heretic; it conjures the words of women burned as heretics before the first witch trials in the sixteenth century. Jones’ work delves into the lost knowledge of women’s ecstatic visions through the writing and song of medieval female Christian mystics, and evokes the strange, isolated imaginaries of anchorites and hermits along with troubling histories of religious and state incarceration of women. This time a 7 speaker surround sound set up with incredibly intricate audio layers. This installation can only be truly appreciated first hand.
