Frac Franche-Comté
Since 2013, the Frac Franche-Comté has been located in the Cité des Arts in Besançon, a culture centre also home to the CRR Regional Conservatoire music academy. The first building to be commissioned by the French state from Kengo Kuma, the Cité des Arts reflects the surrounding landscape while remaining rooted in the city’s history. Set on the banks of the river Doubs and surrounded by bastions that bear witness to the age of the great French engineer Vauban’s fortifications, the building includes a refurbished brick section, a relic of the old river port.
It is here that the Frac holds exhibitions based on its collection, as well as a multidisciplinary cultural agenda. A wide array of events are on offer to visitors, including meetings with artists, public lectures, performances, video nights, concerts and dance.
‘Centrifugal’ in nature, the Frac collection is disseminated throughout the region and is the subject of numerous loans in France and abroad. Since 2015, a truck converted into an art space known as ‘Le Satellite’ has acted as a travelling exhibition, taking art to those who are far from cultural centres.
In line with its aim to raise awareness of contemporary art, the Frac places particular emphasis on guiding the public through their discovery of the works. A range of resources are available for visitors, including exhibition booklets, booklets adapted to disabled visitors, activity booklets, FracBox for children, as well as information sheets in Braille and hands-on models. Cultural outreach is seen as an open and interactive conversation and is tailored to suit each individual.
Some sense of perseverance, of resistance
Since 2006, the Frac Franche-Comté collection has revolved around the notion of time. In 2017, the Frac acquired a work by Elisabeth S. Clark entitled ‘A Spark Kept Alight’; flickering across the space above our heads is a subtle, fleeting spark. This work bears some resemblance to György Ligeti’s ‘Poème symphonique pour 100 métronomes’, presented by the Frac in 2014. Anyone who attended this concert will remember its anthropomorphic dimension. Each metronome kept us on the edge of our seats. Each was like a human heart that seemed to be insisting, striving to be the last one to beat until there was complete silence. Like Ligeti’s work, Elisabeth S. Clark’s offering conjures up for me some sense of perseverance, of resistance.
And resistance was also the topic of the exhibition ‘Survivre ne suffit pas’ (‘Survival is insufficient’). Held at the Frac in 2019, it was a mixture of works from our collection and political and poetic overtones. Its title was taken from Station Eleven by Emily St-John Mandel. Published in 2014, this futuristic novel explored the importance of Culture for humankind, particularly in times of crisis, for it is through Culture that man is able to maintain or recover his humanity.
In 1966, British artist Peter Hutchinson wrote a short piece entitled ‘A Review from the Year 2066’. In it he described an age without artists and with no need for art. Yet for the author this was only possible because it was a fully developed utopia, a world devoid of injustice, poverty, war, borders, pandemics and climate or environmental threats. Until then…
Sylvie Zavatta is an art historian and exhibition curator. She was director of the Frac Basse-Normandie from 1986 to 2001, then of ESBA Mans from 2001 to 2005. She has been director of the Frac Franche-Comté since 2005.
Technical acquisition committee
Stéphane Ghislain Roussel
Olivier Kaeser
Sophie Lapalu
Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza
Sylvie Zavatta
Administration
Patrick Ayache
Sylvie Zavatta
Contact
Frac Franche-Comté
Cité des Arts
25 000 Besançon, France
contact@frac-franche-comte.fr
T +33 (0)3 81 87 87 40