It’s nice to visit people’s homes. You learn a lot. You see how someone does comfort, and you also probably learn a trick or two; you might try this with your leftovers, you could do that for lighting, how do you install those space-saving shelves? There’s inventiveness, care, expression. It’s also a mitigation of reality because those of us who are lucky enough to have housing outside of war zones are likely unlucky enough to be living in an affordability crisis. What can we do to make it work to live where we do? Who will we live with? Where? How? We mix ourselves with space over time regardless of how we answer such questions. We alter, repair, tolerate, improve, modify, adapt. It’s a joy when we’re invited in.

Friendships call for another mixing of the self. New ones can drum up a fresh and enlivening frequency of energetic exchange. Established friendships have a well-worn and solicitous care – a self that you’ve been for a while feels at home, has a familiar way of speaking and shared experiences to draw upon.

We began working on the idea of a Wandering Calendar in 2022. This project initially arose out of an interest in inter-calendrical approaches to the measurement of time. We sought to learn more about varying cultural and historical understandings of the years/months/weeks/days that humanity understands itself to inhabit, but has always counted and recorded differently. Global capitalism asks the international community to agree on the year this is. Even if you live a different calendar, you likely have to keep the dominance of the Gregorian one in mind. And, increasingly, the arbitrariness of measured time is made to look even more absurd as human-made climate catastrophes continue to disrupt the natural cycles that previously characterized the seasons. Time.Space.Weather.Change.Growth.Destruction.Death.Birth.

Where are we?
Where were we?

After reluctantly welcoming 2023, we thought about the relationship of friendship to time. Due in part to the easing of travel restrictions, we were lucky to visit family and friends and reconnect with communities that we had not seen since before the pandemic.

It felt remarkable to be amongst good people – familiar or new – after the years of relative isolation. There was something dazzling about being out in a city where you don’t live, appreciating the chance connections, and acknowledging the inherent meaningfulness of sharing time/space together. In that spirit, we asked these artist friends (some we’ve known for decades, others barely a year) if we could spend some time seeing what they think and

hearing what they need

to do something they want to do

for now

We asked Ashes Withyman, Abigail Collins, S F Ho, Erika Kobayashi, Logan Francis, and Jeanne Randolph if they could share their wide-ranging thoughts, research, interests and translations of time. Their friendly engagement has so far orbited the historical and philosophical concerns that continually reveal how human consciousness is shaped by its political present. They have feelings, ideas, insights and – most importantly – they are game to share this work in public.

With support from Kunstverein Toronto and help from Brennan Kelly, the resulting projects will be presented (in the order above) every other month throughout “2024,” on the streets of Tkaronto and via the KvT website.

The only basic law of physics that distinguishes the past from the future holds that heat cannot pass from something cold to something hot. Heat can’t perform this reversal; will never go backwards. This makes physicists wild about the apparent forwardness of time.

But,

you could also imagine that if you are holding some warmth and you reach out to someone’s cold hand to give them heat, each bit of energy you contribute to their gradually warming hand confirms you are travelling forward together in time!

It may be because we’re warm-blooded, but it strikes us that it’s in this reaching out and making contact that we affirm we are moving forward. Painful though it often is, this movement is undeniably enriched when we undertake the journey together. Wandering Calendar (2024?!) will put these artists’ works out there, for the year this is and the year this could be.

Wandering Calender #1:

In the world: February – March 2024
Locations: 83 Roncesvalles Ave, Toronto. & 1264 College St, Toronto.
Read more…

Wandering Calendar #2

Los Angeles based artist Abigail Raphael Collins contribution to the Wandering Calendar is a new image / text poster project called UNREST… Read more…

Wandering Calendar #3 – Toronto

Wandering Calendar #4

UPCOMING:

Wandering Calendar #5

Wandering Calendar #6

Wandering Calendar #7