THE NEW LIQUIDITY

The New Liquidity is a transdisciplinary research platform and collective for artistic and curatorial practices, launched by artist, curator and researcher Selma Boskailo and sound artist, composer and researcher Anders Ehlin. They use the term liquidity as a referential trampoline for speculation on the porosity of borders as a means of artistic expression and the creation of alternative and potential scenarios.

Since 2021 the duo has mainly focused on producing numerous iterations of the soundwalk project De-territorialized Listenings, combining research from sound art and media art, art in public space, the fields of locative media and technology, sensory studies and emotional geographies. The project centers on the transformation of familiar soundscapes, while addressing deterritorialization in the context of cultural globalization and distancing from the locality through mediatization, migration and commodification of life under the global capital. In 2022 the project was selected as a part of Project Anywhere’s Global Exhibition Program for art at the outermost limits of location-specificity, a collaboration between The University of Melbourne and Parsons School of Art, Media and Technology (The New School, New York).

The New Liquidity is engaged in parallel ongoing research projects using participatory soundwalks, audio guides and installations, mainly investigating the future of freshwater and marine ecosystems, as well as the fluid heritage of water as a repository of geo-cultural and human-non-human memory.

After the Spill

Kinetic Sound Sculpture
Audiovisual Installation

TETI Group, Ausstellungsraum Klingental
Basel, Switzerland

# Antique Foghorn, Video Projection Transducer, Hydrophone, Arduino
Persistaltic Pump
4-channel Audio

After The Spill unfolds through two juxtaposed elements: a sound sculpture and an audiovisual installation. Drawing on the concept of hydrojustice (A. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos), the work stages the Rhine as an active agent which carries industrial memory and toxicity beyond visibility. The installation is anchored by video footage of the Sandoz chemical spill site, foregrounding a landscape marked by ecological rupture and long-term contamination.

In parallel, a displaced foghorn within this inland port context becomes a device for uncertain listening. Traditionally used to orient ships in conditions of low visibility, the foghorn no longer stabilizes space but turns porous. It does not only emit sound, it leaks. Water drips from the instrument, transforming it from a device of control into a body embedded within its environment, dissolving into the very medium it once tried to manage. Its fragmented transmissions echo the dispersed and often imperceptible nature of pollution. In dialogue with the moving image, these sonic interruptions and amplified drips evoke the temporal and spatial diffusion of toxic events, where aftermaths linger beyond the moment of disaster and exceed the limits of direct perception.

The work was exhibited at Ausstellungsraum Klingental in Basel during Art Basel 2026, as part of Portheads and Riverbeds, curated by Giulia Busetti, Gabriel N. Gee, and Cora Piantoni. The exhibition emerged from Maritime Basel, a transdisciplinary artistic research project led by the TETI Group, investigating Basel's maritime histories, river trade, and contemporary port infrastructures.