I & R16 Myths & Facts13 (story) Loading...12 Fayen d'Evie12 Video12 Crisis10 Text10 Reproductions9 Improvements8 Listening8 Sound8 Poetry7 Memory7 Photography7 Favourable Conditions7 Performing the Archive6 Sculpture6 Points of Connection6 Environment6 a border can have no boundaries6 Fandom5 Sincerely Yours5 Casual-Paradise5 Painting5 to listen, not to preserve5 Installation5 writing4 Language4 Archives4 The Anti-Shock Doctrine4 interview4 Labour3 House of Mother Tongue, House of Other Tongue3 Artist Walks3 Record3 Performance3 Augury – The diary of birds3 Pandemic3 Precarity2 Textile2 read2 music2 Paradise2 Gentrification2 Community2 Essay2 fiction2 WS × Social Studio2 listen2 Productivity1 Description1 Angna Mein1 watch1 Anna Dunnill | Processing Plant1 vampires1 Translation1 augury1 The Region1 choreography1 TERRA: Memory & Soil1 Improvisation1 talking1 Surprised face; Heart eyes1 movement1 documentation1 dust1 Sex1 interpretation1 scores1 exhibition1 Politics1 spoken word1
I & R16 Myths & Facts13 (story) Loading...12 Fayen d'Evie12 Video12 Crisis10 Text10 Reproductions9 Improvements8 Listening8 Sound8 Poetry7 Memory7 Photography7 Favourable Conditions7 Performing the Archive6 Sculpture6 Points of Connection6 Environment6 a border can have no boundaries6 Fandom5 Sincerely Yours5 Casual-Paradise5 Painting5 to listen, not to preserve5 Installation5 writing4 Language4 Archives4 The Anti-Shock Doctrine4 interview4 Labour3 House of Mother Tongue, House of Other Tongue3 Artist Walks3 Record3 Performance3 Augury – The diary of birds3 Pandemic3 Precarity2 Textile2 read2 music2 Paradise2 Gentrification2 Community2 Essay2 fiction2 WS × Social Studio2 listen2 Productivity1 Description1 Angna Mein1 watch1 Anna Dunnill | Processing Plant1 vampires1 Translation1 augury1 The Region1 choreography1 TERRA: Memory & Soil1 Improvisation1 talking1 Surprised face; Heart eyes1 movement1 documentation1 dust1 Sex1 interpretation1 scores1 exhibition1 Politics1 spoken word1
David Chesworth, “Indexing the Cylinder”, 2020. 4K Video with audio, 19 minutes.

David Chesworth’s Indexing the Cylinder recounts his experience of viewing and listening to a one hundred year old wax cylinder recording of an Indigenous elder while visiting the storeroom at Melbourne Museum twenty years ago. As Chesworth contemplates relocating the cylinder, his halting recollections explore memory, the recording’s cultural status and its agency as an archive.

The artwork itself becomes a document that archives dubious certainties of human memory and questions our ability to categorically define and locate experience.

David Chesworth’s interdisciplinary practice involves sound, music, video and installation. Together with Sonia Leber, his works arise from research-based residencies in sites undergoing social change. Their mid-career survey exhibition ‘Architecture Makes Us’ was organised by Centre for Contemporary Photography (2018), touring to UNSW Galleries (2019) and Griffith University Art Museum (2019). Group exhibitions include the 56th Biennale of Venice (2015) and the 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014). Known for his experimental and at times minimalist music and sound, he has worked solo, in post-punk groups, electronic music, contemporary ensembles, experimental opera and performance. He is currently a Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at RMIT University.

Sound8 Memory7 Performing the Archive6 Archives4 Record3