Intro

Between 1975 and 2000, the autodidact Chrystel Crickx cut letters by hand and sold them by the piece in her shop in Schaærbeek, Publi Fluor. These vinyl adhesives, bought by locals for their signs and advertising, have since been digitized and made accessible to users outside Belgium and in a range of new contexts. On the fringes of standardized communication, the letterforms have contributed and continue to contribute to the urban visual environment in Brussels and beyond.

The research and creation laboratory (02.2021–05.2022), which had been initiated at the École supérieure des Arts de l'image Le 75, had a specific question about the font: where did its uniqueness come from, typographically speaking, and beyond? Amazing as an object of study, these letters, and all the stories that came with them, bring together a transdisciplinary team of teachers and students to address the eminently contemporary concerns raised by their archive: economy of means (low-tech production and alternative means of distribution), local practices (craftsmanship and vernacular amateur-professionalism), distant and close relationships with the machine.

From the very first meeting, all the challenges of the laboratory's fifteen months are present: during a videoconference, an invitation is extended to students from all over the school – without distinction between the Painting, Photography, "Images plurielles imprimées" and Graphic Design orientations – to examine this object, for which the lab's instigators do not claim to master all the layers of meaning. Research happens as well inside as outside school settings. There is no obligation to hand in a paper, and no evaluation by grades. For most of these Bachelor students, this will be their first long-term art-research project.

The laboratory also invited active artists and thinkers to contribute to the research, which this article documents through the most significant moments of the 15-month project.

Members of the Crickx Lab at ESA Le 75: Soazig Auvray, Camille Balseau, Pauline Barret, Olivier Bertrand, Leyla Cabaux, Abigaël Coeffier, Leonard Gensane, Nathan Izbicki, David Le Simple, Lysiane Schwab, Élise Tanguy.

On déballe Crickx (Unpacking Crickx), opening lecture

Sophie Boiron and Pierre Huyghebaert unpack the archives from Publi Fluor, 102 Avenue Rogier, Crickx father and daughter's self-adhesive letter store, for the opening conference of the research and creation laboratory opening at ESA Le 75 about the Crickx archive.

“Unpacking” Workshop

With Sophie Boiron and Pierre Huyghebaert, guardians of the Crickx archive, at Spec, March 2021.

Day 1. Investigate: rummage inside safes, boxes and pouches. Organize for comparison.

Leyla: Ohlala... When we found ourselves faced with this, we didn't realize how many letters there were, and what a catch-all it was. We started trying to sort everything by size, typeface, gloss, color – it was enormous! It made us realize just how abundant the archive was, and we came across some oddities, as well as seeing the templates that Chrystel used to cut out her letters.

Nathan: It's an archive that's still usable, because the letters still stick. There's a lot left. But until when? We also know that this resource is finite and limited.

Soazig: I opened the trunk, it was a big mess inside, I didn't really know how to go about it. I started rummaging through the pockets where the letter templates were stored. The template is what makes it possible to draw and cut the letter. All these pouches were in this trunk, made by Chrystel Crickx herself. It was all recycled paper: old letters, recycled sheets, taped together, patched up... and inside was a wealth of information about her life. Once I'd read and photographed everything, I sorted it all and put it back in the trunk to facilitate further research.

Day 2. Getting to grips with the material and finding your tools: taking imprints. Try your hand at cutting. Produce pinholes. Collect clues, classify them in a spreadsheet, produce a map of Chrystel Crickx's customers. Archive the unpacking of the archive.

Day 3. Handling, arranging, comparing, presenting.

On the track of Crickx

The few hints of topography that appeared during the unpacking process remain abstract. It's time to confront them, to get out of the archives and go in search of letters in the city. One thing's for sure: “la Crickx” is rooted in the commune of Schaerbeek, via the Publi Fluor store on Avenue Rogier. This will be the starting point for a “typo-tracking” tour. The group leaves the school and the archive to move around: a privileged moment to lead the way to the the laboratory's collective path.

Cut out, paste

“Drawing is quite easy. Cutting is how you torture people!”
— Chrystel Crickx

Abi: I did a bit of collage with the small letters, on crystal envelopes we'd picked up during the workshop at Spec. I make drawings with the templates, assembling them to make patterns and get away from the letter form, which gave me a lot of anxiety, in the sense that typography isn't a medium that makes me throb. For me, creating letters means conveying an idea, making something legible. This is the opposite of what I want to do. When I heard about the laboratory project, I said to myself, “Ouch, graphic design!". But there was an opportunity to take the archive elsewhere, to take it out of graphic design, out of something formal and linear. I was also interested in the multidisciplinary and intersectional aspect of the project. It was great to organize something on a small scale and meet people who weren't part of the 75's photo department, to work with a medium other than photography, another dimension.ailler avec un autre médium que la photographie, une autre dimension.

Methodology of research

In March 2021, we invite artist Mathieu Gargam to guide us in our research, as the laboratory is stumbling on its experiments a little. We lack the methodological know-how or the self-confidence to move forward in the jumble that is the Crickx archive. As it happens, Mathieu's practice is precisely at the point where our questions arise: how do we untangle such an abundant archive, and where do we find the legitimacy to make it our own?

• Mail written by Mathieu Gargam to the research group, on march 23rd, 2021:
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  Hello everyone,
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  J’espère que ça se passe bien pour vous à BXL. Après conI hope things are going well for you in BXL. After consulting the documentation posted online and looking at the raw material, here's what I came up with. I concede it's abundant :)
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  What is an archive, and more specifically the one which remains from Crickx? What I read is its history. How these documents went from being a living, active flux, a working tool, to being a fossil, a subject of research. In this story, four stages materialized by four protagonists mark out this transition:

1. The father of the Crickx family, “René”. He's the craftsman, as it seems.
   With technical training in window lettering. A man of action and field experience, he also cuts out letters and installs them on his customers' premises. Crickx is his work tool. It's a living flux, evolving according to supply and demand. René listens to the echoes of the world and imports new techniques to improve his work tool: fluorescent vinyl from the USA.
2. The Crickx daughter (couldn't find her first name). She's the manager.
   EShe takes over this activity, but doesn't have the same background as her father. Nor the same dynamic, it seems, as she doesn't go out to customers to install them. She modifies the letters so that it adapts to her own workings. In this case, cutting and stock preparation are enough to meet demands while remaining at her counter. A kind of takeaway. Letters adapt, mutate, evolve. The evolution of the letter's shape is organic, personal. Imperceptibly, the font no longer resonates with the times. A dissonance (formal, optical, economic, social, etc.) emerges. Automated, standardized, machines take over. Chrystel Crickx doesn't speak their language, so no transition is possible.
3. Pierre. He's the typographer.
   He easily notices and identifies this dissonance, amplifies it and shares it. Letters are both the tool and the result of his work, and he's sensitive to their music. Crickx is being restored by a group of enthusiasts [Open Source Publishing]. The question is how to get this communication tool moving again. The world and its uses have changed. Open-source will be an economic response and vector graphics a bridge between two languages, that of the hand and that of the machine. The result is a shift towards new media, new territories. Crickx, as a device, is updated. It resonates anew with the world around it.
4. You. Students in graphic design, photography and "images plurielles".
   Young researchers, visual artists, technicians, artists exploring the language of text and image. You're not dealing with a live document, but with a temporal snapshot of typography. Archive = cupboards + crates + boxes. The exploration and use of archive is never more than a story told from this snapshot.
   
   How can/will you position yourself in relation to this material?
   
   Which of your concerns resonate with this material?
   
   If type is the starting point, which path do you want to take?
   
   Do you want to look at the font itself?
   
   Pierre H.'s work remains the benchmark. So what's left to say, to do? Perhaps explore the consequences of switching from die-cutting to vector graphics. Crickx is primarily a capital. What does this say about its possible uses? There are also “images”, icons (telephones, wolves, flags, etc.). This is an interesting track for exploring the link between image and text.
   
   Would you like to look at fragments of its history, its literature (addresses, names, street or telephone numbers...)? Investigative work. Image and text as document, trace, data.
   
   Would you like to explore the link between medium and technology?
   
   What do these cut-up pieces of vinyl have to say about the impalpable flow of information? Technological obsolescence?
   
   Would you like to take a look at what means hand-working in the digital age?
   
   The hand-cutting of letters. That variation, vibration. Administrative note-taking is handwritten. How do you read the evolution of handwriting today? Can there be a synthetic history of writing that appears within this archive, in this little world of its own?
   
   The paintings of Mrs. Crickx, the amateur, her gesture. There's a good lead here too. That “just a little off”, “not quite perfect” like the outline of her letters. Personally, I think that would be my starting point. I'm also wondering about methodologies. I've got some ideas and examples, but that's for another time.
   
   Looking forward to read from you again,
   All the best,
   
   Mathieu

“Chrystel Crickx, she is this movie that no one has seen but everyone's talking about.”
— Mathieu Gargam

Mathieu encourages us to try on several hats: that of the archivist, who distances and sorts things out, and that of the collector, who is moved up by their affect and accepts their fascination for the object in question. In the end, we collectively end up defining avenues of work simply based on what moves us.

Among the avenues of work that are taking shape:

• Exploring the inside/outside relationship inherent in the archive: shop window, transparent pocket, correspondence (letters and couriers) between Mrs. Crickx and her suppliers, etc., also inside and outside the store.

• The desire to “draw” with the envelopes and plastic sleeves used to wrap the letters.

• Lexical field: by turning over the customer cards, we find the words which were meant sticked on windows and for which letters were ordered. This would then constitute a “lexical field” specific to the Crickx archive, handwritten material that would have to be transcribed in order to have this raw text to produce potential specimens.

• Give Crickx back to the city! Because Mrs. Crickx no longer practices, and there are hardly any traces of her left in the streets.

• Go in search of Chrystel Crickx's gestures: it's unlikely that we'll see Ms. Crickx taking up her blade and scissors to cut out letters. So let's give these gestures our own sequel: our gestures.

• Investigating through doing: finding formal ways to bear witness to the variations and imperfections within Chrystel's letters.

• Write a “fantasized history” of Mrs. Crickx (narration, fiction): what was her life like in her neighborhood? where did she go to get lunch or dinner? what was her relationship with her neighbours?

• Photo essay.

• Try to meet Chrystel Crickx.

Taking stock

Launch of the mid-term report from the laboratory on Crickx Street (!) in Saint-Gilles. We put together a window display using letters from Chrystel Crickx's archive. It's an opportunity to get to grips with the basics of typography with the students, in a very direct way, since we're working with tangible letters: interlettering, justification + non-gendered letter combinations in French…

Nathan: You need a very clean surface to stick them on, so we started by washing the windows! Then we squared off and traced the basic lines with tape, just like on a display wall. Before gluing the letters on the window, we prepared the typesetting on a table and spent quite a long time choosing the letters and colors… We had prepared the text beforehand. Then we glued it on. Well, to do so, you first put a shot of soapy water with the spray thing where the letter should be, and glue the top part – the soapy water makes the letter able to slide if you need to reposition it, without damaging it or tearing it off. Then you glue the bottom part of the letter and tamp it down with a squeegee, then wipe it dry with a sponge. It took us a while, though. Since that's their original function, it was part of the story to glue them, on Crickx Street no less!

Camille: If you stick them on the outdoor side of the the window, don't forget to immortalize it by taking photos immediately.

Touring club

Sophie Boiron and Ludi Loiseau invite the laboratory to criss-cross the city to meet Crickx users. We meet people who have lived through the Publi Fluor era, and others who use digital versions of Crickx. We conduct interviews with them to understand their relationship with Chrystel Crickx's letters. These interviews have now been published in the book Publi Fluor, Letter Business in Brussels.

Pauline: One day – when I hadn't yet joined the workshop – I was walking with Soazig and she was telling me what you were doing in the research laboratory. At one point, on Rue Haute, I said to her, “isn't that Crickx?” I didn't know it, but just because she'd shown me a few photos, I recognized her immediately, by her singularity. It said “NO ADVERTISING” on a blue building door, with the colored letters sticking out. That stuck with me.

A few experiments

Camille: I wondered how I was going to get to grips with this material. I had a mixed feeling of fear and excitement around this material where there were so many different things. After a year of examinations and hesitations, I started drawing. I discovered Crickx through drawing in fact. I used it as a springboard to develop my relationship with drawing.

A full-scale type specimen

Invited to lead the ESA Le 75 Crickx Laboratory's closing workshop, the graphic designer Axel Benassis suggested that the students use the constraining proportions of La Perruque's format to typeset a full-scale specimen of Chrystel Crickx's tangible letters. Alternating cut-out letters (recto) and their templates (verso), this issue attempts to restore the particular vibration of this unusual font.

“I wonder how she lived during those years, if she felt good doing all that. It was her job, but was she happy doing it? It seems like it, but I haven't heard it from her mouth yet.”
— Nathan

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