Bascules

“Bascules”: Off-site season 2024–25
Curators: The CAC Brétigny team (Zélia Bajaj, Milène Denécheau, Léana Doualot, Elisa Klein, Danaé Leroy, Coraline Perrin, Marie Plagnol, Ekaterina Tsyrlina). With Hugo Béhérégaray, Louis Chaumier, Elise Courcol-Rozès, Juliette George, Fabienne Guilbert Burgoa, Ariadna Guiteras, Jacent (Jade Fourès-Varnier & Vincent de Hoÿm), Camille Juthier, Bridget Low, Louise Perrussel, Chloé Serre and Marine Zonca

“Here, we touch only with our eyes”: this rule, often stated by mediators at the entrance to exhibitions, provokes a good deal of frustration. It imposes a whole set of habits and conventions regulating the ways an exhibition is approached: how it is produced, inhabited, shared. One could even speak of a habitus, to borrow sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s term, which designates all of the tendencies that individuals more or less consciously adopt in contact with their social environment. For the 2024–25 season, CAC Brétigny is overturning all of the exhibition customs: together, we are attempting to free ourselves from the rules that are mechanically applied in contemporary art spaces.

The residencies, exhibitions and off-site events are infused with artistic, educational and collective experiments. This itinerant program, conducive to impermanence, is a continuation of l’Ecole, which has been bringing together participants from various backgrounds since 2020, to explore horizontal ways of transmitting practices and knowledge in the visual arts. Entitled “Bascules” (“Seesawing”), this season conceives different ways of learning, and offers a variety of relationships with the works. 

Collectively designed by the CAC Brétigny team, “Bascules” started by bringing fluidity into the internal hierarchies. Permanent staff in various posts, along with team members who are doing internships or civilian service, chose to jointly curate this season’s exhibitions and residencies. This decision stems from their shared experience of working in an art center without a director. Since March 2023, CAC Brétigny has been run in a horizontal spirit that involves increased collaboration, something that tends to break down the barriers between our roles. It is through each person’s daily practices, and the experience that collective work implies, that we devised a diverse program in conjunction with the artists.

From September 2024 to July 2025, a series of exhibitions and installations is being presented across the region on sites not dedicated to contemporary art, as well as during local events. Everything has been conceived for the specific context in which it appears, and tries to break free from the codification of the movements, sounds, and gestures in an exhibition. “Bascules” intends to encourage visitor participation and inclusion. This is a matter of giving thought to the place that bodies occupy on exhibition sites, while questioning the effects of the restrictions and standards instituted in those spaces. With the public’s help, we keep transforming the exhibition to adapt it as long as it is used, giving particular consideration to the comfort of the visit. The exhibition is enhanced or reduced according to the desires of visitors, who are encouraged to get their hands on manipulable works, to act upon adjustable installations, to venture into free-practice spaces.

The title of the season evokes multifunction objects: the seesaw (balançoire à bascule), the rocking horse (cheval à bascule) and the rocking chair (chaise à bascule). On the seesaw, one can take turns rising up into the air, or giving the other person a more or less brutal jump, or find a point of balance together. “Bascules” plays with relations of balance by attempting to create a variety of relationships with the objects, mediums and installations found in the exhibitions.

The CAC Brétigny is a cultural establishment of Cœur d'Essonne Agglomeration. Labeled as a Contemporary Art Center of National Interest, it benefits from the support of the Ministère de la Culture—DRAC Île-de-France, Région Île-de-France and Conseil départemental de l’Essonne, with the complicity of the Brétigny-sur-Orge's municipality. CAC Brétigny is a member of DCA, TRAM and BLA!.