Elles [collectionnent]
des mondes
Photographic exchange with
Véronique Béland
La genèse, 2009
People often get us mixed up. It’s not so much that we look alike—we don’t—but that our art practices have proved to be complementary. Our life experiences have a strange resemblance, too. Between us there’s like a mutual sense of déjà-vu. Véronique was about to spend the Fall of 2009 in France as part of a student exchange. And Catherine had gone through the same experience three years earlier. So we thought, “Couldn’t we try to bring about a déjà-vu?” Catherine went back through the photographs that she made during her trip, mailing to Véronique pictures of places and people that she had met. Véronique then tried to rephotograph the images from her own vantage point, in the hope of establishing a connection between what was there and what was not. It became a way of giving value to these stray bits of memory, of bringing two experiences together to create new narratives and fictional worlds.
Not long after, however, ...
After a brief stay back in Montreal, Véronique decided to return to France, this time with the intention of remaining there more or less permanently. There were new beginnings on one hand, and new projects on the other, but in spite of that, we felt that our artistic collaboration was far from over.
Which is why we decided to keep the game going, by exploring this shared sense of déjà-vu in our ordinary lives.
Following the same procedure as the previous Fall, we agreed to send each other, every week, one image that captured something about what we were doing and how we were living. There was only one rule: every Sunday, we would have to reconstruct the image in question, but from our respective situations—regardless of how boring or dull our days might be.
2010-2011
L’ensemble du projet est disponible sous la forme d’un livre, aux Éditions du Renard.
