Summary:

Haunting USC is an investigation of human perception in an increasingly virtualized and mediated world. Artist Doug Jarvis (Victoria, BC, Canada) will inhabit a physical and psychic site within the USC Fisher Museum of Art.

Description:

Artist Doug Jarvis explores the phenomenon of “persistence of personality” as a way of engaging with the potential of the human imaginary. Drawing on his individual and collective projects he will construct an action-based, media collage as a temporary installation within the gallery, culminating in a public discussion on Thursday, March 7 at 3:00 p.m. 

Jarvis positions haunting as a way to engage with the parameters of material and nonmaterial presence in an age of digital technologies and analogue perceptions. He believes that humans are haunted by the ghosts of the things we think are not there. That we populate the terrain of something being "present" with an array of sensed perceptions, experienced and constructed by the power of the human imagination. Following on his research into “ghosts and other non-material entities as audience for his work” and his participation in the avatar performance art group Second Front, and the art collective Noxious Sector, Jarvis presents an exploration of the potential of existing in the world in a variety of dimensions and forms. 

Doug Jarvis is an artist and curator living in Victoria, BC. He is a founding member of the performance art group Second Front and the Noxious Sector Art Collective. His individual and collective projects have shown at G++ Interactive Media Arts Gallery (Victoria, BC), TRUCK (Calgary, AB), PAVED Arts (Saskatoon, SK), Latitude 53 (Edmonton, AB), Eastern Edge (St. John’s, NFLD), Harbourfront Gallery (Toronto, ON), Noxious Sector Projects (Seattle, WA), SHIFT (Seattle, WA) and the Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts (Xi’an, China) among other international and online sites. He has presented at REFRESH! Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology(Banff, AB), Interactive Futures (Victoria, BC), MediaModes (New York, NY), Digital Art Weeks (Xi’an, China), and Subtle Technologies (Toronto, ON). He has attended artist residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, AB and was the 2010-11 Artist-in-residence Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria, BC. Jarvis has received artist grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada and holds an MFA in studio art from the University of Guelph, ON. He is currently Guest Curator at Open Space Arts Society (Victoria, BC), curating recent exhibitions by Deirdre Logue (Toronto, ON) and Susan MacWilliam (Belfast, N.Ireland), and is the President of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres (PAARC). (http://www.dougjarvis.ca/)

Jarvis will be around the gallery during gallery hours on Wednesday and Thursday engaging with the site and building the temporary installation. The public are welcome to view the process during this time and to attend the public presentation.

The event is sponsored by the CRCC Interdisciplinary Research Group, the USC Roski School of Fine Arts, and USC Archaeology.