This edition of the Petite enveloppe urbaine marks the official disincorporation of CRUM. The CRUM incorporated in 2002 due to insurance and banking requirements for an off-site exhibition, but the collective has taken form over the last eighteen years as a network of affective bonds that belie the need to maintain status as an incorporated not-for-profit. Corporations often use the metaphor of a family to describe their administrative structure and to encourage loyalty among employees. This mapping of a paternalistic model onto economic relations has been dated back to the late 19th century, at the moment when the labour processes of urbanization and industrialization failed to align with idealized, rigidly defined and gendered family roles. When CRUM’s incorporated status is removed, what remains? Sound recordings, performances, exhibitions and publishing projects have used appropriation and collaborative methods to create temporary affiliations between people, places and institutions. Along the way, intergenerational ties were fostered. CRUM has biological families and pedagogical progenies. One curator recently referred to these formations as “creation families”; in this spirit, CRUM proposes disincorporation as a utopian method–leaving behind corporate affiliations and moving towards other modes and metaphors of belonging.
The Centre de recherche urbaine de Montreal (CRUM) is a symbiotic (parasitic) research group with no exhibition space of its own. It uses the pre-existing exhibition network to present diverse projects. The CRUM is an artists’ collective dedicated to exploring links between art and urban space. Since 1998, the Petite enveloppe urbaine has gathered urbanites 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 assorted uncommon projects.
Current CRUM members include: Christian Carrière (Executive Aural Stimulator), Matt Killen (Overlord of Entropy); Alexandra McIntosh (Senior Urban Spacialist); Douglas Scholes (Master of Maintenance); Felicity Tayler (Ms. Chief Information Officer)