Karilee Fuglem, Annie Martin, Carmen Ruschiensky and Andrea Szilasi exhibited their work together in an apartment on the Plateau Mont-Royal. That was in 1995, and the project was called Résider. Two years ago, the idea to revisit the experience came to their minds. Thus was born Résider II, presented by Galerie B-312, with the support of La Centrale.

-As in 1995, the artists have rented an apartment, giving themselves enough time to work in the space and to present the results of the cohabitation of four distinct practices. This time, they have chosen to work in a site rich with history, an apartment in the neighbourhood of St-Henri situated at the North-West corner of Saint-Ambroise and Sainte-Marguerite streets, in a building dating from 1889 and classified as a historical monument.

-Karilee Fuglem, much like a land-surveyor, delicately pulls threads through the apartment. The artist is inspired by the history of the site, its origin, its becoming and its present, which she has consciously studied. For her part, Annie Martin lends a dozen ears to the site, tucking microphones on the exterior façades of the building.The noises coming from the street and the neighbourhood resonate in small speakers arranged for the most part in one of the rooms in the apartment. In another room, Andrea Szilasi hangs frames, recalling the photographs of loved ones that one installs here and there in a home. However, these portraits are composed of collages that fragment the image more than they allow for a specific reading, as if the artist wished to stage the spaces which we reserve for the past in our apartments, where photographs, souvenirs and trinkets co-exist, often with no particular reason.

Carmen Ruschiensky places the detritus of domestic life, bric-a-brac and utensils, here and there, in the kitchen. A certain organized disorder invades the site and can be received as the simple traces of life left by hypothetical tenants as much as the result of and artistic contamination of the space.

-This in situ work is accompanied by an exhibition at Galerie B-312, where the artists show works conceived in the spirit and with the means used in the apartment, to present the mnemonic matter of the site. One may also consult documents related to the history of the site, documents recalling Résider, and others referring to history of in situ practice in Montreal apartments.-Résider II will be punctuated by activities presented by La Centrale : an artist talk, two walking tours by Karilee Fuglem and Annie Martin visiting unheard-of sites they have discovered in the neighbourhood; also not to be missed, La Centrale's window, at 4296 Saint-Laurent, another site for intervention in the project.

-Jean-Émile Verdier et Émilie Renaud-Roy, English translation by La Centrale.