Through experiment and alchemy, Rob Thorne (of Ngati Tumutumu iwi) extends traditional Maori flutes and horns made from stone, bone, shell and wood deep into the present. A conversation between the past and the present – a musical passage of identity and connection. By listening, we bring ourselves closer to animals, and our collective animal hearing.

Eric Avery (Sydney) is a Ngiyampaa Wangaaypuwan man from the Yuin, Gumbayngirr and Bandjalang peoples of NSW, and the recipient of the Naturestrip commission. Eric will paint and perform a graphic score for a song inspired by his meat name, Marrawuy Kabi (Red Kangaroo).

Lynn Mowson and Bruce Mowson (mOwson+M0wson) will publicly animate ‘some inanimate lumps’.

Language artist Catherine Clover and musical explorer Peter Knight collaborate around the political, musical and philosophical complexities of a field recording made in the songbird aviary at Jurong Bird Park in Singapore.

Las Chinas (Chile) (Cecilia Vicuña, Camila Marambio, Sarita Gálvez and Bryan Philips). Legendary Chilean dissident spirit confrontation in the war zone between orality and textuality. Cleaving open a space in the belly of the beast, weaving language’s energies and memories into a radically open listening.

Melbourne artist Will Foster and Sydney dancer Sabrina D’Angelo respond to lyrebird’s modes of display, referencing the Australian Ballet’s production of 'The Display' (1964) by Robert Helpmann, with costumes designed by Sidney Nolan. Begging for love and attention, the Superb Lyrebird mimics the worst of human behaviours.

In partnership with West Space, Melbourne Fringe Festival, Naturestrip, Australian Indigenous Studies Program at the University of Melbourne.