Antoine Chessex is a Swiss sound artist and experimental musician whose work engages the material, spatial, social, and political dimensions of sound and listening. Since the late 1990s, his work has evolved into a distinctly transversal practice moving between performance, installation, research, improvisation, and composition.
Rooted in noise and sonic intensity, his early experience as a solo performer and collaborator — including works with Zbigniew Karkowski, Jérôme Noetinger, and Valerio Tricoli — positioned him within international noise and avant-garde communities. As a founding member of the experimental noise-rock band MONNO, he toured extensively across underground scenes, while also maintaining an active international practice as a solo artist. In parallel, his work expanded toward large-scale compositions for instrumental ensembles, translating dense masses of noise into open and speculative notation. His pieces have been performed by Apartment House,Ensemble Proton, Ensemble Ictus, and Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin.
In recent years, his focus has increasingly shifted toward installative formats and research-based practices. These inquiries investigate critical acoustic ecologies, blurred architectures, non-linear echoes, sonic fictions, and haunting audio materialities, approaching sound as both a physical phenomenon and a site of memory, power, and sonic imagination.
Since relocating to Zurich in 2015, Chessex has integrated research and teaching at the Zurich University of the Arts into his artistic practice, operating at the intersection of sound studies, sonic arts, and cultural theory.
His works have been presented at numerous venues and festivals around the globe like Cafe OTO (London), Transmediale festival (Berlin), Videotage (Hong Kong), Diapason Gallery (New York), Issue Project Room (New York), The Lab (San Francisco), The Compound (San Francisco), INA/GRM Présence électronique Festival (Paris), Berghain (Berlin), Tuned City festival (Berlin), Alexandrinsky Theatre (St-Petersburg), Sonic Protest festival (Paris), Unsound festival (Krakow), Make It Up Club (Melbourne), Archipel festival (Geneva), Women (Los Angeles), Ultra Hang festival (Budapest), Parnassos concert hall (Athen), Ateliers Claus (Brussels), Vaal Gallery (Tallinn), Dom (Moscow), Grim (Marseilles), All Ears Festival (Oslo), Corsica Studios (London), Sound Forest festival (Riga), Urban Guild (Kyoto), Urga (Tokyo), Ochiai Soup (Tokyo), Namba Bear (Osaka), Swissnex (San Francisco), Center of contemporary arts (Warsaw), Ultima contemporary music festival (Oslo), Fundacion Serralves (Porto), Palace Akropolis (Prague), Tam Tuumb! Festival (Roma), Audio Art Festival (Krakow), Meteo Festival (Mulhouse), Death Petrol No Luxe (Antwerpen), Sibelius Academy (Helsinki), Ze Dos Bois (Lisbon), Elastic Arts (Chicago), HAU (Berlin), Mochvara (Zagreb), Anthology Film Archives (New York), Ancienne Belgique (Brussels), LUFF festival (Lausanne), Ruin Festival (Wien), Echo festival (Belgrade), Fylkingen (Stockholm), Sendesaal Bremen, DNK(Amsterdam), Istituto Svizzero (Roma), Rotterdam Film Festival and Fri Art (Fribourg).
Chessex is the recipient of an Artist Prize "Werkjahr" from the City of Zurich in 2018, a Swiss Music Prize from the Federal Office of Culture in 2020, as well as an Artist Prize from the Suisa Foundation in 2021.