Co-habitations hors champ, 2002

Marie-Suzanne Désilets and Jean-François Prost

L'événement, La demeure - OPTICA gallery, Montreal, curator : Marie Fraser

Temporary residence on a building rooftop visible from the Metropolitan highway (turnpike).

Each having developed a critical reflection on the presence of the body and on its relation to urban space, Marie-Suzanne Désilets and Jean-François Prost are collaborating on a first temporary shelter project. Installed on the roof of a building near a highway, their dwelling strangely occupies an extreme, densely concentrated urban environment marked by anonymity and movement. Their immobile trailer is immediately visible to drivers on the raised, high-speed highway. Lit up at night, its presence is all the more evident in erupting from the urban landscape and road-traffic atmosphere, appearing like a fictional construct of the imagination. For two weeks, the artists live in their refuge, sharing their existence and quotidian life in this weird location, isolated from any private space or domestic environment. Investing an impossible site, they underline the precariousness and vulnerability of housing, while also helping to shift the function of architecture toward process, placing more emphasis on living the everyday, on survival, and on solitude.