Victoria Keddie | DRIFT CHOIR

May 1 - 30, 2025

Opening Reception | May 2, 5-8pm

Drift Choir is a transmission-based system that explores human connection beyond conventional communication models. Over 30 days, it connects locations in Athens, New York, Berlin, and Bogotá through a continuous exchange of sound and image, emphasizing the small-scale, reciprocal, and intimate over the distant, instantaneous, and consumable. The system does not exist to disseminate information on a large scale; instead, it fosters a closed-circuit ecology where listening, watching, and responding form the core of participation.

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From May 1 to 30, 2025, Victoria Keddie will link four locations—New York (Various/Artists), Berlin (Liebig 12), Athens (Stellage), and Bogotá (TBA)—through a continuous exchange of sound and image.

 

The project evolves through participation. Artists, musicians, and writers from her creative community shape the system, which then branches out to involve those within each localized community through live interventions, activating dialogues between locations. A musician in Berlin may layer a drone composition over the ambient noise of Bogotá. Simultaneously, a vocalist in Athens responds to the shifting acoustics of a space in New York City. Participants also engage through shared programming—live translations shift voices between languages, and a networked jukebox allows people to dial in and listen collectively. Informal exchanges across locations foster moments of shared presence between places. These interactions transform the system into a site of exchange rather than passive reception, reinforcing the relational and intimate over the distant and… detached.

 

As part of Drift Choir, "Stay Tuned" assembles a choir of voices between 1000 Hz (broadcast tone) and 200 Hz. Keddie invited a series of people to participate by singing a tone that resonates within their own range, creating a sonic field of layered voices that blend into the evolving transmission. Participants recorded themselves singing, focusing on listening and responding to the sound rather than achieving tonal perfection. The playback becomes a thick, shifting choir of voices—gorgeous and imperfect, moving in and out of tune. The resulting composition thickens the sonic dimension of Drift Choir, where recorded voices merge with environmental noise, radio frequencies, and live transmissions, blurring the boundaries between human presence and planetary signals.