As part of the exhibition Site & Sound: Sonic art as ecological practice at McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, Liquid Architecture was invited to stage a project critically responding to themes of sonic art, acoustic ecology, field recording, deep listening, and spatial sound, understood in the context of profound environmental crisis and instability.

We, in turn, approached four artists—Amias Hanley, Xen Nhà, Thembi Soddell, Tina Stefanou—to work with us towards the realisation of the brief. Months of conversation, messaging, walking, field-tripping, recording, speculating, and other activities, undertaken collaboratively and individually, followed, and remain ongoing.

Our collective project, Unheard Relations, thus far, comprises a polyvocal essay and script to be published by McClelland and Disclaimer in March, alongside four new experimental audio-works, one by each artist, which will be presented at the gallery on 20 March 2021, and online.

Amias Hanley’s practice is interested in listening as an affective practice and the possibilities of sound as an expression of human and non-human exchange. Their field recording composition for Unheard Relations explores the history of the movement of water in the area including the drainage of the Carrum Carrum Swamp.

Thembi Soddell is a sound artist and researcher known for their powerful acousmatic performances and installations. Thembi has been listening to the sounds of birds competing for tree space and grappling with how to represent a site to which is distant from where they are now.

Tina Stefanou is a visual artist and vocalist who is drawn to convergences. We can only guess what wild performance will Tina produce for Unheard Relations, so we have asked Tina for a small quote about this forthcoming piece: ‘An assemblage of connections between an analogue telephone out of Greek peasant food, 250 meters of string, local orthodox chants, sonic supermarkets, vocalisations of artist-as-ape and on a boat grandmother sings “You’re the Voice” by John Farhnam while she encircles a Nietzschean figure. Is this sound as ecological practice?’

Xen Nhà is a documentary maker with a background in creating intimate dialogues, storytelling, and community radio. 'My work for Unheard Relations explores the resonance and traces of grief around language. Speaking with magpies is of similar cadence to speaking Vietnamese. Both are like fragments of lullabies, openings of a karaoke song and proverbial poems. Their tones require an embodied presence of listening, feeling and exchanging. I do not attempt to grasp, but to gently untangle how language can create connections across multiple places.'