Link to sound archive HERE
Drawing on long-standing experience in experimental music and sonic arts since the late 1990s, the works of Antoine Chessex engage sound and listening across multiple formats. Emerging from early practice as an improvising saxophonist and a sustained exploration of noise within performance contexts, Chessex’s work has traversed diverse sonic territories, encompassing solo performances, sound installations, the translation of noise aesthetics into instrumental ensemble settings, and research-based formats addressing the ecological, social, and political dimensions of listening.
Following formative experiences as a saxophonist with jazz and improvised music in Switzerland and New York City in the late 1990s, he relocated to Berlin at the beginning of the new millennium, where he became deeply involved in the city’s experimental and avant-garde artistic scenes. During this period, he developed a distinctive sonic practice around the multiple dimensions of noise, both as a solo performer and through collaborations. He is also a founding member of the noise-avant-rock band MONNO, which toured extensively across Europe within underground scenes. Parallel to these activities, Chessex increasingly worked as a self-taught composer, experimenting with the translation of noise aesthetics and masses of sound into instrumental scores for ensemble. The album DUST recorded at Berlin's Berghain with a string trio and Valerio Tricoli is published on Editions Cave 12 in 2011.
After relocating to Zurich in 2015, Chessex’s practice shifted toward academic research and teaching at the Zurich University of the Arts, where his activities operate at the intersection of sound studies, artistic research, and sonic arts. Together with Tobias Gerber, he co-developed the Minor Sound: Auditory Cultures and Sonic Arts program.