CAC Brétigny

“Club Colombophile du Cœur”
Éric Giraudet de Boudemange
Exhibition at the Brétigny Theater

The “Club Colombophile du Cœur” (the Pigeon-club of the heart) feature the kindergarten Eugénie Cotton, Jacqueline Auriol and Joliot Curie, the schools Jean Lurçat, Gabriel Chevrier and Jean Macé, the Labo, le Foyer du Pont de Pierre and the Institut Départemental Enfance et Famille of Brétigny-sur-Orge; the Collège Paul Éluard of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois; the Accueil de loisirs of Ollainville; the Sociocultural Center Berthe Morisot of Saint-Germain-lès-Arpajon; the AAPISE (Support Association for Participation, Social and Environmental Inclusion), l'Ehpad (Accommodation facility for dependent elderly) Le Village and the High School Edmond Michelet of Arpajon; the APES (Prevention Association for School Failure) of Saint-Michel-sur-Orge; the Collège Jean Zay of Morsang-sur-Orge; the kindergarten Robert Desnos and the Accueils de loisirs Curie, Langevin and La Ferme of Fleury-Mérogis; the Accueil de loisirs of Marolles-en-Hurepoix; the Accueil de loisirs of Plessis-Pâté; the Accueil de loisirs of La Norville; and the Accueil de loisirs of Longpont-sur-Orge.

Artistics collaborators: Pascale Germain (basket weaver), Armando Barbosa, Gheorghe Berinde, Bernard Bourgeois, Antonio Figuereido, Alain Petrisot and Raymond Schwartz (pigeon fanciers).

Combining sciences, popular mythologies and visual arts, the C.C.C. is an artistic project around the mystery of the navigation of birds. Through the creation of a collaborative dovecote, participants from various backgrounds have been introduced to pigeon racing. Weaving links between the experiments carried out on the astonishing capacity of these birds to reach their nests, the labyrinth of the Minotaur, string figures or meditation, the artist deploys an assembly of practices and knowledge in order to cultivate an ecology of attention and tell stories made of cooperation, adaptation and weaknesses. Like a sensitive card, the exhibition in the reception areas of the Brétigny Theater presents the fruit of this collective research during the cycle “Le poil de la bête”.

Video game of the “Club Colombophile du Cœur”:

The “Club Colombophile du Cœur” gave rise to the creation of an online video game by the artist: this digital production retraces in a dreamy form the educational activities carried out during the “Club Colombophile du Cœur”. Each partner of the residency benefits from a dedicated chapter detailing the workshops that took place during the many meetings with the artist. The map in which the player moves is a collaborative synthesis of all the “Essonne seen from the sky” workshops that took place during the summer of 2020: participants were invited to imagine the landscape crossed by the pigeon from the place of release to the dovecote. The characters are 90% illustrated by the participants.

Click to play

The "C.C.C. (Club Colombophile du Cœur)" takes place within the residency mission of CAC Brétigny. Cœur d’Essonne Agglomération is kicking off in 2017 a three-year partnership with the Regional Direction of Cultural Affairs of Île-de-France and the Academy of Versailles with the signing of a Local Arts Education Contract in partnership with the Department of the Essonne. This residency mission was conceived and developed for the region’s inhabitants, especially local young people, and starts from a network of school establishments, associations, and cultural, social, sociocultural, economic and educational entities in Cœur d’Essonne Agglomération.

Éric Giraudet de Boudemange was born in 1983 in Boulogne Billancourt. He lives in Paris and works in France and abroad. After studying at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts  of Paris, at the contemporary art studio of Fresnoy and the Rijksakademie of Amsterdam, he was invited to artistic residencies in many institutions in France but also in the Netherlands, Egypt, Benin and the United States. Recently, he did several performances at the Lily Robert Gallery, the Pompidou Center, the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard and the La Criée center for contemporary art (France) and exhibited at the Fries Museum (Netherlands) and Les Capucins center for contemporary art (France). His works arise from a fieldwork, an ethnographic research which he transforms into the workshop, in personal and poetic narratives. They take various forms: video, installations, sculptures, performances; more recently, video games.