The Vision of Saint Francis of Assisi by Saint Elisabeth

How would you depict the most beautiful moment to possibly exist? For harsh noise artist Saint Elisabeth, Saint Francis of Assisi’s transcendent, ecstatic experience of being visited by Mary and being allowed to hold baby Jesus represents the absolute pinnacle of human experience. Much of Saint Elisabeth’s work revolves around Catholic theology, a tradition within which direct encounters with God occur rarely and always signify an event or a person of extreme importance. For someone in Saint Elisabeth’s shoes, such a visit from the divine shatters our reality, putting all earthly pleasures to shame as we stand face to face with the most incredible love in the universe. Elisabeth takes the unusual approach of representing this moment with a warm, living, organic sonic canvas that crackles and pops as it slides past our ears. Where church tradition depicts such moments with choirs and organs, both musical elements with a clean, open sound that soars high above our physical bodies, Saint Elisabeth exhibits a willingness to engage with Jesus and Francis’s shared bodily nature. No human recreation will put us where Francis stood, but seeing an attempt this novel helps us realize the ways that past over-sanitized, purely spiritual renditions may have fallen short.