.(La Société de Conservation du Présent) 1985-1994
Moreover, those who come after them will not remember it either.
On June 13, 2013, at the Formats bookstore, Agence TOPO launched a flagship publication on .(La Société de Conservation du Présent), a pioneering digital arts collective in Quebec that worked actively during the decade from 1985 to 1994 to bring about a symbiosis between the arts, technology, and archives. Led by Sonia Pelletier in collaboration with Michel Lefebvre and Bernard Schütze, the publication highlights the importance of this collective and pays tribute to Philippe Côté, philosopher and conceptual artist who died in 2011, one of the three founding members of the .(SCP) with Alain Bergeron, software developer, and Jean Dubé, photographer, pamphleteer, and writer.
Critical, alert, humorous, and sometimes irreverent, the .(SCP) reflected a new intellectual, artistic, and social dynamic. The world order, the twentieth century, language, technology, museology, the free circulation of archives, and Third World debt were among the fields of research that guided its positions and actions. Often elusive but prolific, it made its mark with its stamped imprints, slogans, pictograms, untimely use of punctuation in numerous printed materials, and large production of laminated conceptual cards illustrating its favorite themes. At the dawn of new media, the .(SCP) was also a pioneer in the field of electronic networks and computer programming.
Partially bilingual (French and English) and richly illustrated with photographs and archival documents from the Philippe Côté Collection, the monograph includes a comprehensive chronological account of the collective's activities led by the author Bernard Schütze based on interviews with Philippe Côté prior to his death. The authors Denis Lessard, André-Louis Paré and Michaël La Chance write respectively on one of the collective's three founding principles: 1. the principle of archives, 2. the art of promise, and 3. idleness. The author Sonia Pelletier writes the preface and reprints a text published in the journal Inter art actuel on the practice of cartography by Philippe Côté. Nearly a hundred maps are reproduced in the publication to illustrate a sample of this important work. As privileged witnesses, Philippe Bézy, François Côté and Guy Sioui Durand reveal some traces of the SCP based on real-life events that provide insight into the context and some of the SCP's flagship projects. The authors André Éric Létourneau, Philippe Bézy and Michel Lefebvre describe the scope of the collective's technological achievements, including .(Rrose), a chat program, (La ‘Calembredaine), a generative random poetry program, and the Standard Museum, one of the world's first virtual museums. A timeline and bibliography complete the book.
The book will be launched at Formats bookstore and distributed by Édipresse, distributor for the Regroupement des centres d’artistes autogérés du Québec (RCAAQ). The launch of this publication marks the first activity highlighting the research undertaken on the .(SCP) in Philippe Côté's archive, with the collaboration of his brother François. Through a fun and informative website to be launched in fall 2013, Agence TOPO plans to make a large selection of these archival documents available to the public.
The publication of this book was made possible thanks to the support of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and at Conseil des arts du Canada.
