Unearthing or -un-ear-thing- is a new initiative extending Liquid Architecture’s work with experimental education and pedagogy. Led by Debris Facility Pty Ltd, the program takes the metaphor of the ‘ear to the ground’ as a departure point for exploring how collaborative, experimental listening might excavate buried knowledge and help navigate the hazardous conceptual terrain of the present. In deploying the metaphor, we keep in mind that placing one ear to the ground means opening the other to the world above.

Thus, -un-ear-thing-, for us, is about listening simultaneously above, below, and across thresholds, disciplines, temporalities. We also know that the ear today is often a technologised organ. So, alongside the ear to the ground, we hold another image, that of the stethoscope pressed against the body; the human body, yes, and its attendant biopolitics of listening, but also the corpus, or body of knowledge, with all its social, political and artistic resonances.

Each -un-ear-thing- iteration will take the form of an education intensive, on-and/or-offline as conditions permit. Under lockdown, as we are currently, these programs will function as experiments in listening and speaking together while physically apart. Please be in touch with any questions about accessibility.

The first four -un-ear-thing-s will be facilitated by Snack Syndicate, Anja Kanngieser, Sean Dockray & James Parker, Ceri Hann & Roseanne Bartley, with more to follow.

We invited Snack Syndicate (Andrew Brooks and Astrid Lorange) to lead us into this series, as we could imagine no better comrades with whom to share our ears and bodies, and start to sound a collective future’s infrastructure.