The action on the videotaper 'A Breath Hush' takes place almost entirely under water. After a close-up of a blue-greenish surface, the camera disappears under water, to follow the movements of a diver. The manipulated sounds of the water (produced by The Use of Ashes) always have an almost tangible quality and a more or less direct relation with the images. The underwater diver assumes various postures: he does a summersault, turns, sinks, rises, or floats in a foetal posture in the vacuous universe, where gravity no longer counts. The water is alternately still or swirling; the sounds, including snatches of voices, are further away, softer or less soft, andf the images difeerent in light and colour. There are air bubbles like pearls of quicksilver an the man'… skin, and surging up from his nose and mouth. As the minutes go by and you also hear the sounds of breathing and heartbeat, you begin to wonder when the diver will start gasping for air. You see images of another, 'breathtaking' world, where the man almost becomes an alien being, like an unborn child in his amniotic fluid, a cosmonaut adrift in the universe. But the man is unavoidably forced to break away from these immaterial spheres, to emerge and fill his lungs with air... Read more...