In 2007, OBEY Convention started “as a small happening aimed at celebrating weird and sometimes subversive music,” says founder and organizer Darcy Spidle. “From day one, it caught on.” In the last eight years, intimate meetings of contemporary art and music have grown to epic proportions. OBEY reinvents itself every year and still maintains its […]
Art In Fest
Posted inArts + Music
Art In Fest finds its range
Until the iconic Khyber Building on Barrington Street was closed in 2014, the Khyber Centre for the Arts served as headquarters for the OBEY Convention. Visual artists would create installations for the festival, like prismatic ceiling pyramids in the ballroom, or Mitchell Wiebe’s black-light paintings in the attic or poetry readings, poster sales and waffle […]
Posted inArts + Music
Art In Fest finds its range
Until the iconic Khyber Building on Barrington Street was closed in 2014, the Khyber Centre for the Arts served as headquarters for the OBEY Convention. Visual artists would create installations for the festival, like prismatic ceiling pyramids in the ballroom, or Mitchell Wiebe’s black-light paintings in the attic or poetry readings, poster sales and waffle […]
Posted inArts + Music
Fall in—your complete guide to OBEY Convention is here
In this, its ninth year, OBEY is bigger and more inclusive than ever. Along with the standard tightly curated collection of boundary pushing music shows and the Khyber’s Art In Fest running all weekend—Thursday, May 26 through Sunday, May 29—the festival features a new lecture series, the EverySeeker Symposium, plus a mandate to make more […]
Posted inArts + Music
Mykki Blanco, New Fries are coming to OBEY Convention
OBEY Convention just announced some of its headlining artists for the annual contemporary art and music festival from May 26 to May 29, which will include: “Underground rap and performance artist, Mykki Blanco; New York’s renowned avant-jazz futurists, Zs; Marie Davidson, Montreal’s bright light in dark minimal wave; Canada’s most transcendental metal outfit, Nadja; and New […]
Posted inArts + Music
Above Standard Play
Somewhere in a basement, two sisters have fallen asleep with the television on. A dirty VCR distorts voices. These banal vignettes set the stage for video artist Emily Pelstring’s solo exhibition Standard Play at the Khyber, a narrative multimedia show that looks at ideas of gender, media history and technical processes. A Montreal-based artist and […]
Posted inArts + Music
Art infestation
The Art In Fest festival brings a visual arts component to the Obey Convention underground music festival, adding five sound and media-based projects to the festival (including Emily Pelstring’s Khyber exhibition and performance as The Powers). All projects are new work created specifically for the festival—Khyber director and Art In Fest director Hannah Guinan has […]
Posted inArts + Music
OBEY Convention VII early lineup announcement
Not merely content with a single music and art bonanza for their seventh year, Team OBEY has branched out like so many spring buds and created an entirely separate festival of visual art: Art In Fest. Art In Fest will accompany the OBEY Convention—”Atlantic Canada’s only festival of alternate realities for music and art”—this May […]