Centre de recherche sur l'intermédialité (CRI)

(Montreal, Quebec, Canada)

CRI (Centre for Research into Intermediality) was founded in 1996 at the University of Montreal. It unites four research groups from the University of Montreal and McGill University (Montreal, Quebec) and 33 members from the four universities in Montreal, the University of Ottawa, the Collège du Vieux-Montréal, Valleyfield College, the Cinémathèque québécoise, the Phonothèque québécoise, the University of Amsterdam and the Université de Paris III. CRI is one of the first research centres of its kind in Quebec and Canada. Its mandate is to explore the rapidly changing relationships between old and new media, to study the intersection of media, to investigate the contamination of discourses and to analyze the epistemological changes brought on by these relationships.

In 1999, CRI put together its first international conference on the role of new media in intellectual production. Partly funded by the Daniel Langlois Foundation, La nouvelle sphère intermédiatique brought together researchers and critics from diverse backgrounds to discuss intermediality.

CRI's second conference took place from April 12 to 15, 2000. Titled La nouvelle sphère intermédiatique II : Le récit à l'époque de la culture médiatique : mutations et ruptures, this joint venture between the University of Montreal, Laval University (Quebec City, Quebec) and the Observatoire du récit médiatique (Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium) focused on digital literature, hypertext and the many media implicated in contemporary storytelling.

In addition, CRI collaborated on the 13th Entretiens Jacques Cartier: Stop Motion and Fragmentation of Time: Cinematography, Kinetography, Chronophotography, held from October 4 to 7, 2000.

La nouvelle sphère intermédiatique III: Pratiques médiatiques de la manipulation identitaire ran from March 24 to 26, 2001. Besides including a lecture by Laura Mulvey, the renowned film theorist and author of the highly referenced essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," (1) this edition of the conference highlighted the impact of contemporary media practices on identity and the body through a diverse series of presentations by artists, scholars and critics.

CRI has also created the Centre virtuel d'expérimentation intermédiatique (Virtual Centre for Intermedia Experimentation) (2) to offer its members technical support in using new technologies for research and education. One of the centre's recent projects is a student initiative supported by the Daniel Langlois Foundation. These students, all members of CRI, will investigate the impact of the intermedia environment on contemporary forms of expression and on critical reflection and its cultural dissemination.

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(1) Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Screen 16.3 (1975): 6-18. Reprinted in Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures, (Bloomington, Indiana UP, 1989).

(2) http://cri.histart.umontreal.ca/cri/fr/cdoc/ficheinstitutions.asp?institutionsid=77