These Calgary artists can teach you a lot about beating the winter blahs

Caitlind r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett are entering the third week of something they call the Hibernation Project. Two Saturdays ago, they got a bunch of friends together on Zoom and basically ran their own public access station for a night. Later this winter, they'll be recruiting some more pals to help fill their backyard with light sculptures. And snowy weather permitting, this weekend's plan involves building toboggans — before racing them down a hill.

If you've been feeling like a shut-in this winter, the duo's social calendar might be pinging your FOMO sensors right now. There's never much going on in January, after all, with or without the pall of pandemic restrictions. But it's the winter blahs that pushed these Calgary artists to invent the Hibernation Project, a season of art experiments that's been their annual tradition since 2019. 

The artists frequently work together, and they're perhaps especially known for staging works in public space. Some are permanent, like CARBON COPY, a glitched-out sculpture of an '88 Plymouth Caravelle that you'll find parked in Edmonton. Some are transient, like their interactive sculpture Cloud — a cumulus puff of lightbulbs that's become a fixture at Nuit Blanche-style festivals since its creation in 2012. But from January until springtime, the duo — and anyone game enough to play along — will respond to 12 creative "interventions," prompts submitted by other folks who've volunteered to hibernate too. 

What is the Hibernation Project anyway?

It's not quite a festival, although anyone game enough to participate is welcome to join. Brown and Garrett sometimes call it an "art marathon." But however they define it, what's apparent is this: the Hibernation Project lets them get the most out of the dreariest season of the year. 

That's Brown's opinion, anyway, and before she and Garrett launched the first ever Hibernation Project, they were having a particularly rough winter. "Oh! Winter, for me, is not very good," Brown tells CBC Arts. "You fall into this sort of restless — this restless period in winter, when it's super cold and you're feeling isolated and cut off from community." But instead of hiding under a weighted blanket until the return of shorts weather, Brown and Garrett realized something: winter is only as dull as you make it. 

"Winter is this unique almost-resource, if you want to think of it that way. It's certainly a resource for us," says Brown. But it's not necessarily easy to recognize that opportunity. "You really need to find your triggers to sort of break out of that feeling of isolation and loneliness," she says — triggers being the special things in life that inspire her to shake off the doldrums. "Like, how do you charge your battery? What makes it worth continuing?"

For her and Garrett, those things are community ("being around other people!") and conversation ("that can also mean between projects or ideas"). Play has got to be high up on their list, too. Because when it comes down to it, that's what the Hibernation Project really champions. "We've tried to maintain room for experimentation and, you know, freedom to fail," says Garrett. "That's very much at the core."

How to beat boredom

As it turns out, there's a lesson in their story — and it's useful for anyone, not just artists. Because who hasn't felt trapped in an interminable January? Simply put, we all get bored. Brown and Garrett discovered a way to crawl out of that feeling, and their method wasn't all that different from what researchers suggest.

James Danckert is one such expert. He's a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo and the co-author of Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom, which he published with John D. Eastwood (of York University's Boredom Lab) in the year of our Bored, 2020. 

First, it's probably useful to clarify what that word — boredom — means. It's not the same feeling as being drained; if you're wiped, a nap might be enough to sort you out. Nor is it the same as feeling blue. "I define boredom as an uncomfortable state of wanting but failing to engage in the world," says Danckert — though he says there's a line from Anna Karenina that might do an even better job of nailing the concept. As Leo Tolstoy wrote: boredom is "the desire for desires."

The goals can be small! They just have to matter to you.- James Danckert, co-author of

"If you think about it, when we're bored, we want to do something that matters to us. We don't just want anything that's currently available to us. And that mismatch is what makes boredom feel uncomfortable" — a sort of itchy mix of listlessness and restlessness, he explains.

The solution would seem simple enough. Think of something meaningful to do and then go do it. It doesn't have to be as grand as learning a new language or devoting your life to curing cancer — or inventing a 12-week participatory art project. "The goals can be small! They just have to matter to you," says Danckert. 

But if you're feeling bored, maybe don't rush your way out of that funk and into a Netflix binge. Stay calm, says Danckert. Take a minute to reflect. Ask yourself what's boring you. Can you reframe things — the way Brown and Garrett flipped their perspective on winter? If you pause to self-reflect, boredom might point you in a purposeful new direction.

"Clearly, when I'm bored, the thing I'm doing is not important to me. Well, why not take this opportunity to think about what is?" says Danckert. "Because I don't think we give ourselves much time to do that."

What's on the other side of boredom?

For Brown and Garrett, the choice to create the Hibernation Project meant they could spend a whole season devoted to things they realized were missing from their lives — things they truly valued. Garrett says he missed the open-ended creativity of his school days; in the real world, it's tricky to find places where you can just try things for the sake of trying them, he says. He also missed being able to discuss art and ideas in a critical and constructive way with other people, and the Hibernation Project, which has drawn about 100 community members by Brown's estimate, has offered that kind of community. 

And by taking the time to experiment — something they truly enjoy — the artists have landed on ideas they're developing beyond the winter, projects including a monthly sound-art program that airs on Calgary's community radio station CJSW. They're also tinkering with a pop-up exhibition that turns cars into "micro-galleries." (Exact details are TBD on that one, but it's inspired by this theme from the 2021 Hibernation Project.)

Oh, and it sounds like they don't hate winter itself quite as much anymore. "It's just motivation to go outside!" says Brown. "Like, working on an artwork in your own yard is actually quite pleasant because you can come back in and warm up and have a hot chocolate and then go back out again."

Feel like joining them?

The full list of events, including information on how to RSVP and participate — online and in-person — is available on the Hibernation Project's website. As of writing, their program calendar has themes mapped out through April.