This Is Before We Disappear From View

Sonia Leber and David Chesworth’s This Is Before We Disappear From View (2014) exists significantly in the realm of the imaginary. The ultimate power of their sound work resides in the activated unconscious of the visitor, who must grapple with an overwhelming barrage of sensory stimuli. The artists use vocal sounds – and a particular sonic configuration known as a Shepard tone – built up from recordings of over 100 individual voices, which, brought together as a kind of choir of poltergeists, rise and rise, in never-ending escalations. The result is proto-musical and primal; pre-linguistic.

Leber and Chesworth often work with architecture as a framing device, fascinated by how forms both natural and man-made act on us in particular ways. Situated on Cockatoo Island, with its mixed dark and industrial history, it is as if Leber and Chesworth have summoned the spirits of the place – releasing them from their time prison to once again inhabit the spaces of incarceration and labour. The structure of the disused coal store, the high walls of which obscure vision, evokes a sense of enclosure, a holding place or a dead end. We are near the city, but apart from it; close to the water, still it remains out of view. We may look up into the vast sky above and feel its limitlessness, while remaining firmly rooted to the ground. Leber and Chesworth’s multitude of ecstatic voices fly above, around and into the walled space, suggesting another dimension, another place. And in this environ, a single voice is also heard in measured, staccato bursts. Robotic, synthesised and genderless, it delivers instructions, admonishments and encouragements – dogma. It is both overlord and oracle.

Working as a collaborative duo since 1996, Leber and Chesworth incorporate sound, video and installation to create immersive soundscapes and public art pieces that often feature the human voice as a principal subject. For their site-specific work We, The Masters (2011), developed for Melbourne’s City Square, the artists recorded hundreds of vocal exchanges between humans and animals, creating an intimate and entertaining soundscape for people walking through the pedestrian plaza. With the animal parts omitted, voices seemed to call out to passersby – cajoling, caressing, punishing. From veterinarians to zookeepers and domestic pet owners, We, The Masters captured and celebrated humorous and often touching interspecies exchanges while activating the familiar city space in new ways.

Leber and Chesworth are fascinated by the notion of the detached voice, free-floating in space as an object in its own right. In many of their works, voices bounce, resonate and career around architectural forms, surprising and delighting viewers. One such work was Almost Always Everywhere Apparent (II) (2007/11), which the artists embedded into the stairwell at New Zealand’s Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. Fragments of choral singing interspersed with sounds of raw, physical exertion transformed this often-ignored thoroughfare into a resonant chamber both heavenly and hellish.

Leber and Chesworth’s recent solo exhibitions include ‘Zaum Tractor’, Gridchinhall, Moscow (2013); ‘Space-Shifter’, Detached, Hobart (2012), Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (2011), and Conical, Melbourne (2009); and ‘Almost Always Everywhere Apparent’, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth (2011), Mildura Arts Centre (2008), and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2007). Their work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions, including ‘Melbourne Now’, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2013–14); ‘Cooperation Territory’, 16th LINE art gallery and MAKARONKA Art Center, Rostov-on-Don (2013); ‘Spaced: Art Out of Place’, Fremantle Art Centre (2012); and ‘In camera and in public’, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (2011), Madrid Abierto (2007), and Melbourne International Arts Festival (2004). Leber and Chesworth were finalists in the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2011 and have been commissioned to create site-specific works for public spaces in Australia, New Zealand, Wales and Slovenia