Noxious Sector is an ongoing collaborative endeavor by Canadian artists Ted Hiebert, Doug Jarvis, and Jackson 2Bears, dedicated to the exploration of alternative cognitive function, the paranormal and the absurd. Nightmare Inductions was an art installation and exhibition guiding participants through a meditative experience. Through sound, light projection, and photographs, Noxious Sector attempted to induce an altered mental state where imagination meets perception. Invited by a lulling sound of low bass tones, viewers were encouraged to lie down on yoga mats, put on headphones, and slip into an altered state specific to a common nightmare. The nightmare Noxious Sector selected was one in which one’s teeth fall out. Projections were used to stimulate brainwave patterns unique to the nightmare. Set in the opposite end of the gallery were evocative but staged self-portrait photographs, taken by Hiebert’s students, involving lost teeth and discomforted facial expressions.
Outside of the gallery, through a psychic and multimedia exploration, Noxious Sector reevaluated what it means to loiter, haunt, and occupy. Banners, flags, labels, and plaques positioned in Kelowna claimed specific areas as haunted. Noxious Sector found several areas in Kelowna that had public online surveillance access. The group placed banners with QR codes in each of those areas, each linked to a website with a public feed of that very location; if someone were to scan it, they would see themselves on their device.
Ted Hiebert is an interdisciplinary artist and theorist. His work examines the relationships between art, performance, and technology with a particular focus on the absurd, the paradoxical and the imaginary. His individual and collaborative projects have been presented in galleries around the world, including, among others: The Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery (Sarnia, CAN), Open Space (Victoria, CAN), Grunt (Vancouver, CAN), The Museum of Art (Seoul, KOR), The Center on Contemporary Art (Seattle, USA). He is Professor of Interdisciplinary Art and Director of the MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics at the University of Washington Bothell where he teaches classes on interdisciplinary practice and theory.
For more information about Hiebert’s work, visit his website.
Doug Jarvis is an artist and curator based in Victoria, BC. He is a founding member of the avatar performance art group Second Front and the Noxious Sector Art Collective. He also participates in Open Actions, an action-based performance art group that performs monthly in public spaces in Victoria. His individual and collective work explores absurdity, care, the paranormal, non-material entities and technology as a human attribute. Jarvis received an MFA in studio art from the University of Guelph, ON and is currently a sessional instructor in the UVic Visual Arts Department.
For more information about Jarvis’ work, visit his website.
Jackson 2bears is a Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) multimedia installation/ performance artist and cultural theorist from Six Nations and Tyendinaga. 2bears has exhibited his work extensively across Canada in public galleries, museums and artist-run centres, as well as internationally in festivals and group exhibitions. 2bears holds a BA. in Art & Art History from the University of Toronto, as well as a Diploma in Fine Arts from Sheridan College, Oakville. He received his MFA from the University of Victoria. In 2012 2bears completed his PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Victoria. 2bears recently completed two terms as Audain Professor of Contemporary Art of the Pacific Northwest at the University of Victoria; he is currently Associate Professor of Art Studio and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts Research & Technology at the University of Lethbridge, AB. —Treaty 7, Blackfoot Territory.
For more information about 2bears’ work, visit his website.