Tania Candiani

Commissioned for the 23rd Sydney Biennale, the installation is a hanging “river” made from tree branches collected from a riverbank in Mexico. Its organic shape is loosely based on an aerial view of the Murray River basin in Australia. This piece has as its starting point the migrations of waterfowl. Like a large blood system, the path of these birds connects hundreds of bodies of water in the Australian territory.

The piece consists of a network of sound, light, wind and water. The system uses handcrafted reproductions of clay ocarinas, shells, wooden flutes) and field recordings of waterfowl in Australia, to create a continuous and changing song in the cutaway space.

The project explores the idea of traveling through territories through sound and crossing living bodies of water linked by the movement of birds, watercourses that resemble a blood system or neurons. It is also understood as a choreography of moving bodies that migratory birds do in space when they migrate from one body of water to another, all recorded through sound moments that also travel in space.

The pneumatic system activates the ocarinas while the sound system plays field recordings of migratory waterfowl from Australia, to metaphorically reflect on migration, bird language and ecosystems.