Viv Dogan Corringham

*2026 stock* In the rural terrain of Prespes, Greece, Viv Corringham emits a croak that mimics both a passing bee and the clucking of a distant chicken, straddling their sonic similarities, drawing both animals into unexpected kinship. In Muenster, Germany, she traces the undulation of air billowing through a train station, suddenly dragging the rhythm to the foreground of our attention. As with the first instalment of Soundwalkscapes, her voice is used to revive a “lost river”, this time focusing on the Walbrook in London – she relays various tour-guide tidbits regarding the river’s history, occasionally resurrecting the river’s contours through the swoops and chicanes of improvised song.

 

She croons into tunnels; she plucks out the dominant pitch within a morass of traffic noise. Her presence enriches our intimacy with these spaces, conveying the warmth of a harbour-side cafe, giving voice to the raindrop sidling down a window, swelling into the subterranean, illuminating the distances. She unravels the simplistic notion that to listen deeply requires the subject to remain silent. Rather than subduing herself to strive for a supposedly “unmediated” rendering of these places, Corringham is purposefully present throughout, guiding our ears toward intricacies that would have otherwise passed unperceived.

The process for Soundwalkscapes is as follows: take a walk each month, make recordings en route, assemble compositions from the materials gathered. There are numerous fantastical turns, with field recordings dropping out to reveal overlain lattices of voice, as if Corringham has retreated from her surroundings and into the interiors of daydreaming. Elsewhere she flings herself into the stereo corners, disguising her vocalisations as muzak playing out the coffee shop speakers, or as strange amphibious creatures tucked within the persistent rain. Occasionally she addresses the people within these soundscapes directly, ordering a small cappuccino with 2% milk during the closing moments of “August (Rain, Sag Harbor, NY)”, dispelling any notions of the recordist as a pair of disembodied ears floating through their environment undetected.