PETITE ENVELOPPE URBAINE: An Exhibition of Exhibitions in Envelopes

August 3, 2022

Webster Library, Concordia University, July and August, 2022
Organized and curated by John Latour, Teaching & Research Librarian – Fine Arts Concordia University

The Centre de recherche urbaine de Montréal (CRUM) is a symbiotic (parasitic) research group founded in 2000 by Felicity Tayler, Matt Killen and Hugues Charbonneau, and later joined by Douglas Scholes, Alexandra MacIntosh and Christian Carrière. Members of the CRUM collective, also known as “CRUMmies” explore links between art and urban space through their diverse and creative collaborations with artists, artist-run centres and other organizations at local, national and international levels; and through the 20+ year production of their remarkable Petite enveloppe urbaine (PEU) series.

Although the CRUM has produced gallery exhibitions, each work in the PEU series is a de facto temporary exhibition. “Since 1998, the Petite enveloppe urbaine has gathered urbanities of various disciplines around topics concerning their ways of life and their imaginary worlds. The small publication infiltrates different networks in various countries taking the form of paper envelopes containing uncommon projects”[1] – in the tradition of assemblage magazines and portable exhibitions.

This exhibition of exhibitions in envelopes presents a selection of the twenty-three issues of the Petite enveloppe urbaine that have been published since the series’ launch in 1998 – first under the supervision of Charbonneau and guest coordinators, and then by the CRUM itself with occasional guest collaborators as of no. 11 (2004). Covering a wide range of topics linked to art and the built environment, works in the exhibition also highlight the imaginative, poetic and playful nature of the CRUM and their collaborators.

The Webster Library thanks the members of the CRUM for their involvement in this exhibition and for the loan of CRUM-related materials. Concordia Library is also grateful to Artexte for the loan of several issues of the PEU to supplement those held by our own Special Collections.

If you already knew about us, you are part of a special group.— CRUM

What have I got myself into? — J.L.



CRUM bank papers leading to the end of the money trail

May 2, 2020

The record of CRUM’s deposits since 2001. Now that the non-for-profit incorporation status has been retired, this account book has been reduced to a pretty thing to look through.

With incorporation there is paper, and with paper there is accumulation. After years of accumulation, there comes dissipation. These files have become obsolete.

Caisse de dépôt Desjardins – CRUM bank statements, 2002 – 2017.


PEU No. 23 Disincorporation

May 30, 2018

CRUM-DesjardinsBilandeFermeture

Régart, centre d’artistes en art actuel (Lévis, QC)
14 au 30 Septembre 2018
Exposition collective
Commissaire : Amber Berson

CRUM in the press! Bilan relations de presse_Utopie comme méthodologie

Cette édition de la Petite enveloppe urbaine marque officiellement la dissolution du statut de société du CRUM. En 2002, le CRUM a acquis le statut de personne morale afin de satisfaire aux exigences requises pour une exposition hors-site en matière d’assurance et de procédures bancaires. Cependant, au cours des dix-huit dernières années, le collectif a pris la forme d’un réseau de liens affectifs allant à l’encontre de la nécessité de conserver un statut de personne morale sans but lucratif. Les sociétés font souvent l’usage de la métaphore familiale pour décrire leur structure administrative et encourager la loyauté des employés. La superposition d’un modèle paternaliste sur les relations économiques remonte à la fin du XIXe siècle, au moment où les processus de travail propres à l’urbanisation et à l’industrialisation ne correspondaient finalement pas avec les rôles familiaux idéalisés, définis de manière rigide et sexospécifiques. Maintenant que le statut légal du CRUM est dissolu, que reste-t-il ? Des enregistrements sonores, des performances, des expositions et des projets de publication ont fait usage des méthodes d’appropriation et de collaboration pour créer des affiliations transitoires entre des personnes, des lieux et des institutions. En cours de route, des liens intergénérationnels se sont tissés. Le CRUM a des familles biologiques et des progénitures pédagogiques. Un commissaire a récemment qualifié ces groupes de « familles de création ». Dans cet esprit, le CRUM propose la désincorporation comme méthode utopique, laissant derrière lui les affiliations corporatives et évoluant vers d’autres modes et métaphores d’appartenance.

PEU 23. Désincorporation a été publié dans le cadre de l’exposition Utopie comme méthodologie, commissariée par Amber Berson pour le centre Régart (Lévis, Québec), du 14 au 30 septembre 2018. Nous remercions le centre et le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec pour leur soutien.

Traduction: Jean-Louis René

CRUM performance on September 14, 2018. CRUMembers present: Chris, Douglas and Felicity with Matt and Alexandra via virtual Skype.


#tinyartlab

April 16, 2016

https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/tinyartlab/

CRUM’s Overlord of Entropy, founding member Hugues Charbonneau and its Master of Maintenance launch a new project!

#tinyartlab is a hashtag, an open platform for artists.

There is no need to apologize for the what and the where, #tinyartlab sees itself in relation to the other. It simply is.

#tinyartlab is a hashtag at the disposal of artists who want to share new projects. It is a way to find oneself in the white noise of the making and exhibiting art. Its friendly network flourishes within existing social media platforms. It is suited to aesthetic experiments in form and concept. Nobody owns it.  There are no geographical limits. No need to fundraise. No need to ask permissions. It is an ever-growing virtual collective exhibition.

Post your art project (video, gif, photo, text, sound, etc.) then simply hashtag it with #tinyartlab to broadcast to a network of contemporary artists and people who care.

#tinyartlab manifesto

#tinyartlab manifesto


Wood Stacks + Public Domain Footage

October 13, 2015

CRUM’s Executive Aural Stimulator releases bouncy new track and video made from old Canadian logging footage. Mike Dubue edited together images from ‘Lumbering in British Columbia’, made by the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau in 1925. The film is now in the public domain…


119m meters above sea level

December 9, 2014

On December 06, 2014, the exhibition 119 meters above sea level opened at the SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art in Montreal. The project aims to reconstruct the lost archives of 45°30′ N-73°36’ W, an exhibition first presented at the Saidye Bronfman Center for the Arts and the Sir George Williams University Art Galleries (1971) that CRUM identifies as the progenitor of conceptual art exhibition practices in Montreal.

Exhibition continues from December 06, 2014 – February 14, 2015 with:
Product demonstration and conversation (in french) with
Stéphane Bélainsky, Electromagnetic Environmental Expertise, Inc:
Saturday, January 24, 2015, 2pm
and
Film preview (in French, with English subtitles) of
Le Semeur (Julie Perron, Les Films de l’Autre, 2014), a portrait of Patrice Fortier and his Société des plantes, on:
Saturday, February 14, 2015, 2pm

Install-pano-rough
exhibition panoramic
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Getting Rambunctious With Words

December 8, 2014

Sound piece made by CRUM’s Executive Aural Stimulator and Overlord of Entropy for the 119 m Above Sea Level exhibition at SBC galerie d’art contemporain in Montreal.


Wrestlemania (CRUM Edition)

November 11, 2014

CRUM’s Master of Maintenance displays his astounding athleticism in this epic battle…


CRUM readies for December 6th SBC Gallery exhibition

November 9, 2014

On November 08, 2014, Executive Aural Stimulator and Master of Maintenance were deep in the bowels of the SBC Gallery archive room preparing a key factor for the CRUM’s upcoming December 6, 2014 exhibition.   It was not all work.  Fun, too, was had.

06-Archives-boxes-before_0125

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Protest/Prayer

October 21, 2014

CRUM’s Executive Aural Stimulator reports on shadowy happenings with Mere Phantoms at Brandts 13 museum in Odense, Denmark…


Petite enveloppe urbaine no. 22

August 26, 2014

PEU22-BrilaEnvelope

Brila Youth Summer Creativity Camp Edition
July 2014, Montreal

The CRUM was an invited guest at Brila Summer Creativity Camp. The camp is based on a model for teaching philosophy to children. This means that kids from age 6-12 are introduced to imaginative tools that help us wrestle with the ethical dilemmas of everyday life. In the week that the CRUM led a two-hour workshop, the kids had been learning about POWER through discussions of justice and workshops on comic book super heroes! To help along their exploration of the theme of power, the CRUM decided to make an envelope edition on the theme of ELECTRICITY. Read the rest of this entry »


Petite enveloppe urbaine no. 21

March 9, 2014

PEU21-frt-bck-web-site

Édition limitée / Limited Edition
March 2014
Montreal Canada

Total printing of 100, broken down as follows:
Edition of 70,
7 Artist Proofs (AP)/ Épreuves d’artistes (E.P.),
7 Dedicated Proofs (DP),
3 Printer Proofs (PP),
3 Trial Proofs (TP),
10 Hors commerce (H.C.)

LAUNCH / LANCEMENT
Saturday, March 22, 2014
La Galerie Espace
4844, Boul. St-Laurent
Montréal, Québec
H2T 1R5

The nine contributing artists have been brought together for the enveloppe and are all participants in the group exhibition Something Something Something are:
Francois Arès 
Eric Bond 
Gaël Comeau 
Andras Csaszar 
Joe Dunlap 
Erika Kohutova 
Daniel Michaud 
Douglas Scholes 
Victoria Wonnacott


Luis Jacob: Light On (Flashlight)

November 13, 2013
Image
Image credit: Light On (Flashlight), 2013, video still. Courtesy of the artist.

The CRUM hosted Luis Jacob while he was in Montréal for the presentation of two video works Theory, 2002, and Light On (Flashlight), 2013 as part of a larger project titled, Network Consciousness / La conscience du réseau.

To learn more about the event, see the description at SBC Gallery, or at Vidéographe.

Luis Jacob is a Canadian artist and curator born in Peru. He presented his work at documenta 12 (2007) and at the New York Guggenheim Museum (2010). He lives and works in Toronto.


Istanbul Biennial

October 8, 2013

CRUM’s Executive Aural Stimulator reports on dreamy goings-on at the 13th Istanbul Biennial, creating a soundtrack for the mere phantoms‘ installation there, which runs until October 20th.


Vestiges I

August 6, 2013

While on residency in the beautiful Îles-de-la-Madeleine, CRUM’s Master of Maintenance organized and sorted debris in a few of the Islands’ many clandestine garbage dumps.  Vestiges I is a visual poem of sorts, a reflective look into his actions. Music is by CRUM’s own Executive Aural Stimulator.


Other Things

July 19, 2013

CRUM’s Executive Aural Stimulator reports on sonic wilderness adventures with his compatriots in the Lanark Land Art Recording Group. Everything you hear in this piece was recorded in the woods. Much fun was had…

Filmed in Greenwood, Ontario, Canada in the spring of  2012.


Suspended Narratives : Montreal Decades

February 28, 2013

This Saturday night March 2nd, CRUM’s Executive Aural Stimulator will collaborate with sound artist Navid Navab and Mere Phantoms for a night of interactive shadow projections and spontaneous sonic alchemy at the McCord Museum in Montreal !

Nuit Blanche 2013


Petite enveloppe urbaine no. 20

November 14, 2012

 

Game / Jeu
November 2012
London, Hackney, England
Edition of 70

LAUNCH / LANCEMENT
Banner Repeater
Platform 1
Hackney Downs Network Rail
Dalston Lane
E8 1LA
Friday, November 16th, 2012

Daniel Canty & Patrick Beaulieu (Montreal, Canada), collectif_ fact – Annelore Schneider & Claude Piguet (Geneva, Switzerland), Emotional Driven Process Based Parallel Identities (London, UK), Levin Haegele (London, UK), Lukas Heistinger (Vienna, Austria), Pekko Koskinen (Helsinki, Finland), Alan Magee (London, UK), James Prevett (London, UK), NaoKo TakaHashi (London, UK), Andy Wicks (London, UK) and YKON (Helsinki, Finland)

    


Floating City

June 27, 2012

While on residency in London, UK, CRUM’s Master of Maintenance was out and about looking at and reacting to the condition of things.  Floating City presents rubbish as a simple, meditative and even beautiful part of urban life.

Filmed on an iphone 4s
Regent’s Canal, de Beauvoir Town, London, UK – March 2012


Group magic

June 27, 2012

CRUM Executive Aural Stimulator reports on wonderous dreamscapes of Montréal’s cultural imaginary. Nuit Blanche (2012) at the McCord Museum in collaboration with Mere Phantoms and the many, many museum visitors who built the maquettes!

Music by Christian Carrière and Frank O’Connor
No-input mixer and keyboard : Christian Carrière
Guitar and loops : Frank O’Connor
Music Mix : Adam S. Wright
Mere Phantoms : Maya Ersan and Jaimie Robson
Videography : Maia Iotzova


Fratres for no-input console and viola

April 19, 2012

CRUM Executive Aural Stimulator reports on the conclusion of a residency at OBORO (2011): Arvo Pärt’s 1977 string quartet piece Fratres, played using only audio console feedback.


Salad Manifesto

April 18, 2012

Drafted and signed at the Wheat Sheaf in Toronto in a moment of legislative inspiration…


On the razor’s edge of corporate law

February 3, 2012


Soft Saturation Residency – Arvo Part Feeds Back

October 5, 2011

Artist Talk and Performance

Saturday December 3rd, OBORO, 4001, rue Berri, local 301, Montréal

Last summer, CRUM Executive Aural Stimulator spent some time at OBORO working out an idea he had. The music, by Arvo Part, was originally written for a string quartet. This version is played using only tuned audio feedback. No external sound source is present. This technique is called ‘no-input’.

 


Hello from Motor City

September 26, 2011

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Good Day,

I arrived to Detroit late on Saturday night, in fact it was midnight.  I would have arrive 4 hours earlier but missed my train at 6:40 am that morning.

When I arrived at the station in Windsor I had just enough time to take a cab to the bus terminal where I caught the Tunnel Bus to Detroit (4.00$, but $10 for the short taxi ride).  Once there, I was met by Martin Dufranse and Gonzague the two DARE-DARE organizers and Jeff Deburyn from Detroit.  Jeff took us to the house where we are staying (2018 11th Street) but not before dropping in to a local bar for a beer and to meet other Imagination Station members.  After and quick libation and on the way to our house, he took us on a abbreviated tour of Corktown, the neighbourhood in which we are staying.  This is a very old neighbourhood, dating from the 1850’s.  Many of the homes and buildings are either gone, razed, or are left abandoned.  But there are many homes still occupied and within the neighbourhood there are urban farms, that is individuals who have assumed land and taken up farming vegetables and fruits and even raising chickens.  In fact, in one of the homes beside where we are staying there is a rooster that announces each morning. The urban farmers survive by selling their produce to local restaurants and at the markets.  As we saw this area in the dark, at night, quickly as Jeff drove us around after having imbibed and as he rolled his cigarettes and texted on his iphone (muti-tasking is not dead).
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Petite enveloppe urbaine no. 19

August 15, 2011

Amanuensis
Août / August 2011
Montréal (Québec); San Francisco (California)
Edition of 119

     

LAUNCH / LANCEMENT
Pierre-François Ouellette Art Contemporain
Jeudi 18 août, 17h-19h, avec DJ cyan
Mémoire pour le future | Memory for the Future, 17 – 27 août

Adad Hannah | Alexandra McIntosh | Alissa Firth-Eagland | Amish Morrell | Andre Furlani | Ann Butler | Anne Bertrand | Anne-Marie Proulx | Ardath Whynacht | Barbara Clausen | Barbara Wisnoski | Catherine Bodmer | Chris Carrière | Claudine Hubert | Corina MacDonald | Daniel Olson | Darren Wershler | David Tomas | Denis Lessard | Denis Longchamps | Doug Scholes | Emily Falvey | Eva Fromm | François Lemieux | Felicity Tayler | Florencia Marchetti | Jacob Wren | jake moore | Jen Allen | Johanne Sloan | John Latour | John Murchie | Karen Spencer | Karilee Fuglem | Leisure Projects | Lowell Darling | Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf | Marisa Jahn | Mark Gaspar | Michael Blum | Michèle Theriault | Michelle Bush | Nathalie Angles | Nicole Burisch | Peter Dubé | Rebecca Duclos | Robin Simpson | Sarah Greig | Sarah Watson | Sarah Wookey | Simon Brown | Sturm Husqvarna | Taien Ng-Chan | Therese Mastroiacovo | Tom Sherman | Urs Lehni | Vincent Bonin | Vincent Trasov

In San Francisco, tsunami sirens pierce the seaside air every Tuesday at noon. In this city under constant threat of extinction, Rick and Megan Prelinger have accumulated a private collection of over 40,000 books, periodicals, ephemera and government documents. Many of these documents were once in public library collections, but have been discarded as cultural memory is digitized and migrates online. In the American democratic tradition of building community through private assets, the Prelingers have opened their Library to everyone compelled by curiosity. While some of its most avid users arrive via Silicon Valley, this Library is an ark of pulp and paper, something solid that might float when rivers of information lose their wellsprings of electricity.

The Centre de recherche urbaine de Montréal assigned an amanuensis the task of soliciting search requests from fifty-seven people in different cities. The amanuensis received these requests and browsed the Prelinger Library for appropriate material. The collection is arranged as a landscape, interpolating the history of communities and their relationship to the environment. Accordingly, the act of searching must follow the contours of this topology. Petite enveloppe urbaine No. 19 contains the answers to their questions.

Tous les mardis à San Francisco, des sirènes rappellent aux habitants la possibilité imminente d’un tsunami. C’est à l’ombre de cet anéantissement éventuel que Rick et Megan Prelinger ont amassé les 40 000 livres, périodiques, documents gouvernementaux et autres publications éphémères qui deviendront, en 1983, la Prelinger Library. Bon nombre de ces documents, abandonnés dans le sillage de la numérisation omniprésente, proviennent des collections de bibliothèques publiques, et fidèle à la tradition américaine du mécénat communautaire, la Prelinger Library est justement ouverte à tous. Bien que la plupart des habitués y accèdent de façon virtuelle, l’archive demeure une véritable arche de Noé faite en papier, prête à retrouver l’océan si jamais les sirènes sonnent pour de vrai.

Le centre de recherche urbaine de Montréal a engagé les services d’un amanuensis (copiste) qui a sollicité des requêtes de recherche auprès de cinquante-sept individus d’un peu partout dans le monde. Le copiste a sillonné l’archive afin de répondre à ces requêtes — archive qui prend la forme d’un paysage, intercalant l’histoire des communautés et leurs contextes respectifs. Le parcours du chercheur suit donc les contours de cette topologie. La Petite enveloppe urbaine no. 19 en présente les retombées.

Traduction : Simon Brown

Thank you / Remerciements:

With thanks to Edward Maloney, Pierre-François Ouellette, Rick Prelinger, Megan Shaw Prelinger, Kevin Kelly, the Canada Council for the Arts and all of you whose questions led the way through the dusty books in San Francisco.


Epistemic: of or relating to knowledge or to the degree of its validation (OED).

March 30, 2011

CRUM offers doctoral seminar on the epistemology of science. Students respond favourably to epistemic things. Lesson plan developed in collaboration with Byzantine iconographer, Adrian Gorea.

Recommended reading

Rheinberger, Hans Jörg. On Historicizing Epistemology : An Essay. Tran. David Fernbach. Stanford :
Stanford University, 2010.

Rheinberger, Hans Jörg. Towards a History of Epistemic Things: Protein Synthesis in the Test Tube. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997

Photo courtesy of Florencia Marchetti, thanks to Chris Salter for the framework.


Parlez au machines / Talking to machines

February 13, 2011

Parlez aux machines
Interactivité: Outils et Approches

Workshop MaxMSP/Jitter

Talking to Machines
Interactivity: Tools and aproaches

en collaboration with Philippe Hughes

Horaire / Schedule :
samedi / Saturday  5 march & dimanche / Sunday  6 march et
samedi / Saturday 12 march &  dimanche l/ Sunday 3 march, 2011
Heures / Times :
12h00 – 16h00 chaque jours / each day  total = 16 hrs.
Localisation :
CRUM House 83 rue, Ste-Marguerite, St-Henri, H4C 2W5

Inscription / Registration:
Avant mercredi le 2 mars 2011
Before Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Please submit your registration request to
S.v.p. remettre vos demandes d’inscription à
Philippe Hughes:
philippehughes@hotmail.com
Téléphone @ 514 274 1390.

# participants : 8 personnes

Cost / Coûts – 125$/person

This workshop will cover the fundamentals of object-oriented programming languages of MaxMSP/Jitter.  It has been specifically designed for artists and musicians wanting to learn how to use computers for interactive projects or physical computing to build their own instruments. Each workshop session will provide an opportunity for participants to get hands-on practice through succinct interactive projects.

Cet atelier couvrira des notions de base du langage objet visuel MaxMSP/Jitter.  Il est spécialement conçu pour les artistes qui veulent apprendre à produire des projets interactifs à l’aide d’un ordinateur. Il s’adresse également aux musiciens qui souhaitent fabriquer leurs propres instruments avec le « physical computing ». Les participants auront la chance de mettre en pratique leurs nouvelles connaissances en réalisant des minis projets interactifs dans le cadre de chacune des séances de la formation.

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Smoke Signals

October 24, 2010

CRUM asks, “What sort of plumes does LEGO set free?”


The Americas : Independent Artistic Practices in the Era of Globalization

October 20, 2010

Las Américas : Prácticas Artísticas Indipendientes en la Era de la Mundialización

The Res Artis 12th annual General Meeting, Montréal October 6-10.

On the subject of mobility, “lightness,” and Writing and Research Residencies, the CRUM remains resolutely local.

Panelists are (from left to right), Marc Drouin (Centre des auteurs dramatique, off camera), Sylvie Gilbert (Artexte), Johan Lundh (independent curator), Felicity Tayler (CRUM), Kitty Scott (Banff Centre) and the moderator, Peter Dubé. Dubé’s recent novella, Subtle Bodies, bears the lightness of sensuous language.