Gravity Research
As part of an ongoing, experimental and often ad hoc approach to art making, the Gravity Research project is a catch-all forum for the formalization of informally conceived interventions, performances and curiosities. Many of Noxious Sector's more established projects have grown from this context, through iteration or intentional development -- however often these projects are just what they claim to be: practiced moments of exploration whose gravity comes from being grounded in an ongoing process of inquiry rather than conceived an executed in a more formal manner.
Descriptions of these works are included below.
Conversations with Alfred Jarry
Conversations with Alfred Jarry is a project first initiated while curating the exhibition More Often Than Always / Less Often Than Never at the Richmond Art Gallery. As part of the curatorial selection process for the exhibition, a series of seances were held in which we contacted Alfred Jarry as an advisor to the project. The works presented here are derived from these conversations, in which a marker was attached to the planchette used to communicate with the ouija board. Rather than a traditional wooden planchette, an upside-down sieve was used, as an allusion to the voyage undertaken in Jarry's Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician. The images seen here are selections from the project.
Gravity Research
In the summer of 2010 Noxious Sector collaborators Ted Hiebert and Doug Jarvis were invited to present work at the Xi'an Academy of Art in Xi'an China. One night, on the steps of the Xi'an Art Gallery, the question came up of what it would be like to roll up stairs instead of down. In some ways the curiosity was concerned with representations of anti-gravity, but also with the enduring question of impossibility as the ghost of illuminated living. The conversation turned into a moment of experimentation where the best way to know what it would be like was to try it -- resulting in the images presented here, selections from the project.