The Sirens is a sound and video installation incorporating 16mm, super 8 and video, as well as guitar amps and a "slide" show. In this work, Henricks continues to explore themes that are ever-present in his practice: sound and music, textual elements, repetition and the body. A series of slides reveals the text: "when we hear the voice, we move to a place without words. Time is denied both future and past. We move sideways into the moment. Firmly and comfortably inside the body." Henricks locates the body within sound, the physicality of sound and its reactions and effects on the physical. Extreme close- ups of technology related to sound recording and production reveal this relationship: a hand places the needle on the record, a UV meter quivers, acupuncture needles seem to tremble and water ripples rhythmically from sound vibrations. Henricks makes sound visible, revealing and looking at its effects and interactions; speakers pulse at low frequencies and guitars tremble under knives making sounds and sensations that linger in and outside of the physical.

On this work, Henricks offers:
"On a trip to Mauritania three years ago I bought several cassettes by a singer named Dimi. I know nothing about Dimi except her name. It's difficult to get information about music from Mauritania: few commercially produced CDs are available on the international market. Instead, Mauritanian music circulates locally on homemade cassettes like the ones I bought, recorded using non-professional equipment. In spite of the poor technical quality of the recordings, Dimi's voice has a power to move me that borders on supernatural. When I listen to her, I become locked in the here-and-now. I follow the sinuous line of the melody with no understanding of the language or context. I am transfixed by the dynamics of her phrasing: the rising and falling of the notes and the increasing intensity of her intonation. At certain moments, it feels as if her hand is closing around my heart. That a human voice can have this power is astonishing to me.

Dimi isn't the only singer who can do this. If I were to tell you that Patsy Cline can affect me in the same way, you might laugh. What I am describing is obviously extremely subjective, but there is some general consensus that goes beyond specific singers or genres. You might listen to Dimi and feel nothing: maybe it's Maria Callas who makes you shiver. But that as it may, what this confirms is that the listener is an essential part of the equation: not only that he or she has ears to listen, but that there is a connection between the singer and the listener that is somewhere beyond the physical fact of sound waves.

Here in the west, we understand the notion of voice to have political implications as well as aesthetic ones. The ability for marginal communities to acquire voice is enabling and empowering. For me, listing to music of Mauritania feeds into a life-long fascination with the power of voice, primarily in the aesthetic sense of the term. This is not only as a listener, but also as a singer. My grandmother sang, my mother sings, and I sing. None of us has a beautiful voice, but we can carry a tune and stay in key. It seems we are genetically compelled to sing: that there is something in our blood that makes singing seem like the right thing to do while, say, washing dishes. As a musician who worked with a live band for a number of years, I became addicted to the pleasure of signing. When one sings, one enters an altered state of consciousness that is similar to the feeling one has when listening to a good singer, but much more intense. Time slows down. You become locked in the moment. You have a strange feeling of being both deep inside your body, yet somehow outside of it. This is what I wish to explore with this project: the power of the voice to alter consciousness, and the relationship between singing and embodiment."