Intermission is a group of people hailing from around the globe each with their own ideas about art and how to interact and display it. Each Intermission member adds their own influences and style to projects, with interests ranging from sound media to automatic painting, to drawing, to almost anything and everything being possible.

Intermission's members feel that the packaging, critiquing, and historicizing of art can take away from the most enjoyable parts of art and the experience of making art. Intermission focuses on what art can do as a social service rather than being a gallery service. The group promotes Happenings and Performances in Vancouver1. What Intermission considers paramount to it group is how well they can work and live together under the same roof. As a group, ideas related to singling out one person as genius is avoided. Members prefer to be remembered collectively rather than as single entities.
Intermission is best known for their single day events, which requires hours of preparation. Its members put a lot of time and effort into preparing props for the events which may be destroyed. This destruction of work serves to demonstrate the community's strong links can easily rebuild any destroyed object.

Intermission is a bit like the Situationist International, headed by Guy Debord based in Paris. This historic movement encouraged people of all backgrounds to break away from routine by inserting new art experiences into every day existence. Art collaboratives aimed to expand the borders of community's experience by breaking down the boundaries that exist between audience and performer and getting everyone involved.

It is true that not much has been written about Intermission, but Steve, whom I spoke with for one, likes it this way. The collective is small and hidden, still wrapped in a layer of enigma. Instead of an art gallery loop, the group displays their own work consisting of friends, neighbours, and fellow artists. Intermission members are ready to serve the local community through art events. Intermission organizaer, Steve, would not mind if the group's name solely spread by word of mouth. In fact, he would be quite happy if Intermission disappeared into the shadows if it no longer served the community. After all in this collaborative model, the Performance, and the Event are really about being together. "Art…Is really a party"2 after all.

Footnotes:
1 Some events held include: The Base Bed event, Vertigo - Site and Sound, Art Collaboratives, and much more. A Well-organized list is posted on their website.
2 Quote taken from interview with Steve Calvert