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—Amy 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.

*Thembi regrets mentioning Pierre Schaeffer. We have all heard enough from the "great white men" of sound art. Suddenly five cheerleaders storm the room dancing throwing confetti. All the artists join in.

Amy 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. Amy’s 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 slippery nature of grief. I do not attempt to grasp, but to gently untangle my personal archive around my relationship with my bà nội (paternal grandmother), burial sites and land.”