The Haunt
Ted Hiebert, Doug Jarvis and Jackson 2bears.
in the exhibition PsycheDADA, PAVED Arts
Saskatoon (SK) Canada
16 September-27 October 2011.
Curated by David Lariviere.
The Haunt: (PAVED Arts, Saskatoon, SK)
The Haunt
a Noxious Sector project
We were thinking about ghosts and wondering how they find their spaces to haunt, and what creative forms such hauntings might take. We each have our own ideas about what this might mean -- whether the inhabitation of virtual space, the willful abandon to unconscious directives, or the spirit possession of a technological present.We decided to try to purposefully haunt each other. We didn't really know how to go about it, so we made it up. We took turns -- two of us ganging up psychically on the third -- invading his house and mind, and attempting to implant our presence on the space he was in...
We know Ted Hiebert has a fondness for absinth and keeps empty bottles on the tops of his bookshelves. We also know he doesn't like the cold. So we rattled bottles at him and tried to knock the bottles off of his bookshelves. We also held ice cubes to our foreheads and projected the feeling onto him at a distance, using telekinetic strategies, chanting and psychic taunting to reinforce the impact.
We know Doug Jarvis has his studio by the forest where animals prowl, and that he has recently been attempting to communicate with his stomach -- what he calls his belly brain. We also expect that he doesn't like the smell of feet, especially when they have warts on them. So we taunted his belly brain and ran around like animals and rubbed our feet in his face, using witchcraft spells and voodoo techniques to help amplify the effects.
We know Jackson 2bears finds whistling very annoying and doesn't like to be hugged. We also know he has recently been working to channel Beethoven's music through technological interfaces. He and Ted also have a long history of spilling beer on each other. So we repeatedly whistled the Moonlight Sonata (badly) and hugged him and spilled beer, using ouija boards, a pendulum and a bear skin rug to help animate his space.