a voice for radio

Based on a live performance in St George’s church with Free Range Orchestra for the 2023 Ramsgate Festival of Light, Kat Peddie presents a sound installation inspired by Ramsgate’s maritime history and present, and St George's church tower's historical doubling as lighthouse.

 

Experience the medium of radio as it sends out its SOS signals, attempts to tune in to divine poetic transmission, and makes, breaks and navigates contact between land and sea.

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Kat wored with Sean Williams (concept co-creation, radio and sound engineering, recorder of bells), Anna Braithwaite (singing voice) and Ben Horner (recording, sound mixing and sourcing) to make the installation.

The piece explores the shifting sands between spiritual and seafaring salvation, their shared reliance on, desire for, and fears around, hearing and being heard. It uses the medium of radio as a disembodied space of voicing reminiscent of Cocteau’s Orpheus (1950), where the radio is both a place of divine poetic transmission, and the practical and material means by which those on land and at sea kept and keep in contact.

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Kat Peddie is multidisciplinary artist working in text, sound, visual and performance mediums, both as a solo artist and with performance groups. She often works in conversation with Kentish environments and traditions.

She lectures in Creative Writing the University of Kent, has an international publication record of poetry, sound installation, visual work, and articles and composed the recitative for Lauren Redhead’s digital opera The Octopus.

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As a performance and installation artist she has worked, either solo or with various groups (Free Range Orchestra, Free Women, Trudgepig Folk Theatre, Kate’s Bush) at, among others, Turner Contemporary, WinterSound, Folkestone Triennial, Smugglers Festival, Sounds New Festival, Profound Sound Festival, Sandwich Medieval Centre, Whitstable May Day, Queercall Folkestone, Ashford & Sandwich Wassails, Free Range, Hard Work, Xing the Line, Tears in the Fence festival, Poetry in Expanded Translation (Bangor University) and various universities (Bristol, Kent, Goldsmiths, Paris Sorbonne, LAMDA).

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The Free Range Orchestra is a collective of musicians, dancers and poets with a shared love of improvisation and experimentation that evolved from our series of adventurous music and combined arts events.

FRO performances combine the uncompromisingly anarchic with a celebration of creativity and community. The orchestra meets regularly and has performed at festivals and venues across Kent, including Turner Contemporary, WinterSound(CCCU), Profound Sound and Folkestone Triennial.