CRUM

LANCEMENT / LAUNCH
19 octobre 2007 (en honneur de la Centre St-James )
18h à 23h
à Dare-Dare Centre de diffusion d’art multidiciplinaire de Montréal.
All proceeds from the launch will go to the Saint James Drop-In Centre. Les profits de la vente au vernissage seront versés au Centre de jour St-James.

DARE-DARE est situé
dans un parc sans nom / in a park with no name
entre Saint-Laurent et Clark,
entre Arcade et Rosemont/Van Horne
métro Rosemont ou bus 55 (sortez à Bernard).

Press
“Blogosphere,” Steve Faguy, The Montreal Gazette, Saturday 13 October (2007), B2.

“Street dreamscape,” Christine Redfern, Montreal Mirror, Vol. 23 no 18 (2007), Arts section.

dream listener: an audiobook in three movements is the compelling story of dream listener, a public art project by artist Karen Spencer in collaboration with the Centre de recherche urbaine de Montréal (CRUM), Homeless Nation, and the St-James Drop-In Centre. …

dream listener, le livre audio en trois parties est l’histoire fascinante de porteur de rêves, un projet d’art public signé Karen Spencer en collaboration avec le Centre de recherche urbaine de Montréal (CRUM), Homeless Nation et le Centre de jour St-James…

Photos from the launch (courtesy of Jean-Pierre Caissie and Dare-Dare, and featuring the mobile sculptures of Alexandre David)

Read the rest of this entry »

Nous sommes tous des beaux rêveurs
We are all beautiful dreamers

Karen elaine spencer a présenté une performance/lecture de rêves au Festival Voix d’Amériques, le 5 février 2007 entre 17h-19h à la Casa del Popolo dans le cadre de la serie Text-Perplexed animée par Victoria Stanton.

As part of a segment of the spoken word Festival de Voix d’Amériques, dream listener recounted a narrative of her experiences. Perched on a tall stool in front of a microphone, she seemed tentative at first and alternated throughout between telling a story and reading dreams.

She stated early on, “these are not my stories, but they are my stories to tell.”

So much of what dream listener is about is the notion of “authorship” synonymous with ownership in our knowledge economy, where intellectual property becomes a hotly contested legal matter. In our economic structure, dreams are something from nothing. They are a common, shared creative experience with little value because it does not take great skill to do it. Dream listener also points out that in our economic structure sleeping is considered a waste of time, hence the expression, “sleeping on the job” or sleeping “too much.” Dreams are undervalued precisely because they come from this useless activity, and they in themselves cannot be bought or sold. Despite their pervasiveness dreams remain mysterious and with out convincing explanation – why do we dream?

Read the rest of this entry »

Dream listener (aka karen elaine spencer) gave an interview with CBC radio to be aired on Saturday, January 20th between five and six on 88.5 fm.

“it was mostly the dream holding aspect of the project we talked about as the other part is slower to come together… it is so difficult to talk intelligently about homelessness and dreams.

Read the rest of this entry »

Du 1er au 27 octobre au Centre d’art actuel le Lobe de Chicoutimi au Saguenay qui accueil des artistes en résidence.
Communiqué de presse

“so far things have been moving rather slowly. i have not yet been able to work with the maison d’acceuil sans abri, but i continue to meet with sylvaine, the director…and maybe this wednesday i will get the chance to present my project to the residents so i can listen to their dreams. there are no homeless living in doorways, chicoutimi is a small town and it seems everyone has shelter of some sort. my project so far has been to condense into thirty words or less my own dreams and then to write the dream on carboard and circulate on racine street.

Read the rest of this entry »

dream as private property

My Dream
by Ogden Nash

This is my dream,
It is my own dream,
I dreamt it.
I dreamt that my hair was kempt.
Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.

homelessness and dreams
Dreams are invisible to others. a wholly private, personal world that the dreamer “owns”, as ogden nash writes—it is my own dream, I dreamt it. as such dreams are a personal resource that, in the terms of the market, are scarce. no dream is identical to your dream, your dream cannot be reproduced and only you can tell it. (choosing to not tell the dream can be as powerful as choosing to tell the dream.) your dream is yours, no-one can take your dream away from you, the dream is your very own private property with but one witness…you. here, you are the expert, the dream is yours.

This fact, of complete ownership, of complete privacy, means that the dreamer has something no-one else possesses. the dream is wholly bound within the dreamer…her intellectual property.

Read the rest of this entry »