Project

Designed as a kind of intermediary between a multimedia library and a theater, CAC Brétigny is more than open to its surroundings. From the creation of on-site artworks that make it possible to take over and significantly alter a site, to involving amateur groups in producing and appreciating art, CAC Brétigny has always emphasized its singularity by paying special attention to the women and men who form the art center and allow it to grow.

CAC Brétigny has been fashioning a structure and a program of events and exhibitions that make both artists and audiences true end users. The program of art events, structured by Céline Poulin, includes all the activities of the art center, from communications to production to outreach. The CAC Brétigny finds itself functioning as a collective space, where each guest, each partner and each member of the team is actively participating in the construction and identity of the project. For the experimental video channel “Pillow Programme”, the CAC Brétigny staff thus invited certain artists who have been a part of the art center’s daily existence, who have shared in and supported its activities. In 2022, “Nest” is also curated collectively, involving all the people working at the art center. Within this exhibition, the experimentations of l’Ǝcole, a project co-created by the art center team and different users, artists, theorists, teachers, etc, write themselves. The CAC Brétigny is in fact fed by the theories of popular education and co-creation, at the crossroads between amateur and professional practice, between educational and artistic activity. Thus, the graphic designers Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé came up with an identity for CAC Brétigny that is an ever-evolving joint construction with the art center. It is a project that embodies CAC Brétigny, which is diverse and open, like any space that wants to remain vibrant and alive.

2022—2023 Season: These instituting bodies

For the 2022-23 season, CAC Brétigny will pursue its experiments into uses of its space through different exhibitions that each establish a particular relationship with users ̶ artists, curators or local residents. The individual and collective bodies invited will bring with them their rules, their ways of seeing things, their need for freedom and their constraints, entering into what we call the Institution, and modulating its borders and bounds. From professionalisation of amateurs to attempts at shared governance, passing via different methods of collaboration and pedagogy, “These instituting bodies” (Ces corps instituants) will inscribe the stories of their combats and intimate or public desires at the art centre in particular.

Conversation about These instituting bodies between Thomas Conchou, Daisy Lambert and Céline Poulin

Archive of the previous seasons available in the History's page.

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, and with the complicity of the Brétigny-sur-Orge's municipality. CAC Brétigny is a member of TRAM and d.c.a.

Staff

Céline Poulin
Director (2016-2023)

Céline Poulin served as the director of CAC Brétigny from June 2016 to April 2023. Her vision for the art center, like her earlier programs and exhibitions, evinces her focus on reception as well as collaboration, information and communications arrangements. In this regard, she has mounted, for example, the group shows “Vocales” and “Desk Set,” as well as the first solo shows in France of Liz Magic Laser, Núria Güell and and recently the first institutional monograph of Sara Sadik. Before starting her activity as an independent curator in 2004, she was head of the youth program of BD BOUM, a comic strip festival affiliated with the Ligue de l'enseignement, a french national network of popular education. She has also worked in institutions as Parc Saint Léger (Pougues-les-Eaux) or Crédac (Ivry-sur-Seine). From 2015 to 2018 she codirected with Marie Preston (with the assistance of Stéphanie Airaud) the travevling seminar “Legacies and modalities of co-creation practices”. This work was an extension of Micro-Séminaire, which was published in 2013 and theorized curatorial practices occurring outside of the usual designated spaces. That gave rise to Co-Création, which was jointly published by Empire and CAC Brétigny. In 2021, the CAC Brétigny and Tombolo Presses published Inventer l’école, penser la co-création [Inventing the school, thinking co-creation] of Marie Preston, of which she is the editorial director with the artist. Céline Poulin is a cofounder and member of the curatorial collective Bureau/, which is behind a dozen exhibitions. She is also a member of IKT.

Elisa Klein
Head of production

A graduate of the Master Critic-Essay—Writing of contemporary art from the University of Strasbourg, Elisa Klein was trained in exhibition coordination and critical writing in contemporary art. She has worked as a production manager at the Frac Île-de-France, at the Gaîté Lyrique and within Fabbula, a cultural practice dedicated to the idea of worlding with digital media in the company of artists and thinkers. Alongside her activity as a producer, she develops a curatorial activity within the Chimère collective with which she organizes exhibitions, transdisciplinary and multi-media editorial projects.

Marie Plagnol
Head of communication and public outreach

After multidisciplinary studies, between philosophy, cultural policies and art history at Sciences Po, Sorbonne University and Panthéon-Sorbonne, Marie Plagnol turns to curation. She develops a curatorial practice rooted in a reflection on the links to be forged between artists, institutions and publics. She is interested in the notion of friendship in its political dimension, as a tool to rethink our networks and communities. As a member of the Champs magnétiques collective, she curated in 2021 the cycle of exhibitions Green Suns Will Still Rise (Mains d’Œuvres, CAC Brétigny, Bétonsalon, DOC, La Passerelle). Marie Plagnol seeks to establish long-term collaborations with artists and has worked for several years with Céline Pierre. They are currently collaborating on The Skênê Notebooks (2022). Throughout her career, she notably worked at the MAC VAL, at Para Site in Hong Kong and at Council.

Milène Denécheau
Technical and public outreach manager

Holder of a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and a Master's degree in Works Management and Exhibition Mounting, Milène Denécheau trained as a stage manager at Frac Bretagne and Galerie Danysz. At the same time, she is developing her practice of mediation within the art-expression association specialized in the creation and dissemination of contemporary art.

Coraline Perrin (civic service)
Communication and public outreach assistant

Jun Zhang (internship)
Curatorial and production assistant

Regular collaborators

Anne-Charlotte Michaut
Co-director of the Revue

After studying literature, Anne-Charlotte Michaut moved on to research in history of contemporary art (École du Louvre and Université Paris I). Today she is developing an art critic activity, notably for L’Œil and Manifesto XXI.

Thomas Maestro and Valentina Ulisse Associate curators for the 2023-2024 itinerant season

Julien Jassaud
Technical management and advice

Julien Jassaud is an artist and programmer. After the ESTP, he studied at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris and the Advanced Institute of Art Media and Sciences (IAMAS) in Japan. As a programmer and technician, he collaborated with many artists such as Christophe Lemaitre for CNEAI and Confort moderne, Aurélien Mole for Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain, Marlies Pöschl for CAC Brétigny, Fayçale Baghriche for MAGCP, and Mercedes Azpilicueta for CentroCentro in Madrid, Museion in Bolzano (Italy) and CAC Brétigny.

Romain Best
Installation work and construction

Guillaume Rannou
Proofreading

Guillaume Rannou has done theatre in the street, as well as theatre in the theatre, co-created the collective Bracer, self-published the Japenese literary blog êtreaujapon, participated in CIP-IdF’s Commisson of words and invented shows (J’ai !, un essai sur le rugby ; La Vérité en pointure, à partir d’un texte de Derrida ; Nous sommes tous, performance généalogique). With David Poullard, he formed a collective that works on the ordinariness of language (books, posters, performances, etc.) He proofreads: he loves checking everything, sometimes proposing something else, and being among the first to read a text.

Annie-Rose Harrison-Dunn
Translator

Annie-Rose Harrison-Dunn is a freelance translator and journalist. She translates for public art and research institutions. Her non-fiction writing centres on food production as a subject of public interest. She was born in Derby, England, in 1990 and has lived in France since 2012.

Reception team
Loïc Hornecker, Yasmine Kicha, Lucien Thomas-Parcot

Administrative hub

Director: Sophie Mugnier
Administrator: Cyril Waravka
Assistant Administrator: Céline Semence
Administrative Assistant and Accountant: Isabelle Dinouard
Assistant Accountant: Nadine Monfermé
Guard: Emmanuel Préau
Maintenance Technician: Rachid Boubekeur

Former members of the team who participated in the project since 2016: Valentine Brémaud (internship), Cathy Crochemar (internship), Camille Duval (internship), Céline Gatel (civic service), Mathieu Gillot (technical and public outreach manager), Domitille Guilé (civic service), Ariane Guyon (internship), Julie Kremer (public outreach officer), Thibault Lambert (head of production), Léa Lecourt (public outreach officer), Elena Lespes Muñoz (Head of communication and public outreach), Camille Martin (head of production), Mathilde Moreau (curator and production assistant), Raheleh Nasiran (internship), Manon Prigent (communication and public outreach manager), Valentina Ulisse (internship), Juliette Valenti (internship) et Suheyla Yasar (internship).