Has the goal you first set out with shifted any since the day you first opened Canada’s doors in 2000? How has the contemporary art climate changed since then?
If we didn’t feel okay about the way things have unfolded we would have quit by now. There’s something about a group that helps to regulate change. It’s easier to become a monster when you’re left on your own. I think we have been able to maintain all of our ambition and most of our poverty. Contemporary art changes every day. Thank god. I think the down market has given it some spunk again.

How do you set yourself apart from the hundreds of other contemporary art spaces filling the streets of New York City?
I guess our belligerence and our romance? We’re also open to letting strangers use our toilet.

A group show curated by Wallace Whitney and Michael Mahalchick opens this September.