Miranda July


It is so hard to take a picture of sound. This is the closest we could come. For the Whitney Biennial I am installing a sound piece in the museum's big elevator. The piece is called The Drifters. As the elevator drifts up and down and the people drift in and out all day, they will catch pieces of conversations from worlds near and far. Maybe you will hear what your neighbor says to her husband, or maybe you will hear a teacher high on a mountaintop inspiring children to lift their fists into the universe. All the voices are done by me, and I am working with my longtime music collaborator Zac Love. In addition to the multi-media performances and videos (the video Nest of Tens will also be shown in the Biennial), I've made three albums. The Drifters departs from where I left off with my last recorded work. The challenge is to make something that can be entered and exited at any point, and for this reason The Drifters will be made in many short sequences. The joy of it is that the riders are mine, if only for fifteen seconds.