IDLE WORSHIP 2025 was a tongue-in-cheek subversion of Calgary’s car-obsessed culture, responding to the prevalence of personal vehicles by reclaiming these paved places for people, art, and ideas. A convoy of subversive creativity, IDLE WORSHIP traversed our civic landscape as so many commuters do daily ~ but more subversive intentions. Pithy and playful, IDLE WORSHIP is equal parts community project, commentary, and intervention in plain sight.
Tag: Idle Worship
IDLE WORSHIP 2025: artists & route
On May 24 & 25, 2025, a mobile exhibition of 11 artist-driven cars will tour the sprawling parking lots of Calgary/Mohkinstsis, transporting strange, subversive, and satirical artworks in a motorcade of cars. IDLE WORSHIP features pick-up truck performances, back-seat sculptures, and automotive installations designed in response to our car-centred city, featuring an all-star cast of local artists.
IDLE WORSHIP: mobile exhibition
In late September, 8 artist-driven cars became moving micro-galleries, welcoming visitors to experience a series of strange, immersive, whimsical, playful, absurd, and satirical artworks – each tucked inside its own automobile. Traveling in a law-abiding motorcade, IDLE WORSHIP responded to Alberta’s car-centric culture in a slow rally from familiar place to place – traversing the Calgary landscape as so many commuters do daily, but with an utterly different intention. Pithy and playful, IDLE WORSHIP was equal parts community project, commentary, and intervention in plain sight.
CAR CULTURE
Cities were sculpted – at first by accident, and later with great intentionality – around the mobility of their occupants. Especially in western Canada, where colonial aspirations commodified the land within living history, the century-old grids of cities reflect pragmatic and linear thinking, overlaid on a sprawling geography. In Calgary, urban sprawl creeps across the river valley and outwards into the foothills and prairies. Geographically, there is no body of water or mountain range nearby enough to impede this wicking outwards, and so the expansion of our city is limited only by one factor: just how far are people willing to travel to accomplish their daily tasks?
IDLE WORSHIP
IDLE WORSHIP is a mobile exhibition of art and performance in cars touring across the parking lots of the greater Calgary / Mohkinstsis area on Sept 24 and 25, 2022. Intended to subvert the car-centric culture of Alberta and utilize the “non-site site” of the car interior, IDLE WORSHIP is part community project, commentary, and intervention in plain sight.
IDLE WORSHIP is a spinoff of The Hibernation Project.