Jean-Christophe Norman - Walking progress

The building that will house the new spaces of the Franche-Comté Frac, to be located in the centre of Besançon on the bank of the river Doubs, is to be built to a design by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. Kuma’s architectural practice is based in the Minatoku district of Tokyo. His work is notable for its criticism of academic and formalist approaches and its synthesis of east and west, inventiveness and tradition.

The “walking progress” project grew out of a desire to give concrete reality to poetic, real and imaginary paths linking the city of Besançon to the megalopolis of Tokyo.


In this piece the viewer will walk simultaneously in two spaces thousands of kilometres apart, moving through a new city where day meets night, space and time expand and west and far east undulate together in shared waters. The experience of a faraway place in our present space merges imagination with reality.

“Walking progress” will offer a walk in the present through another place, in which incompatible scales are superimposed, turning a mixture into a unity and so crystallizing the constant dialogue between here and elsewhere.

Using geographical maps of Besançon and Tokyo, “walking progress” will trace the outlines of analogical cities. The city of Tokyo becomes located in the centre of Besançon, while Besançon stretches across the vastness of the capital of Japan, with landscapes glimpsed while walking.

These “transurban” walks will be evoked through video and sound recordings, images and sounds recreating the stirrings of cities, of the world, near and far.

J.C N


It will be possible to view the project by following this links