The quiet Jura village where artists breathe life into machines.
The Jura balcony awakens under the March sun. Between sky and mountains, the village of Sainte-Croix and the l’Institut de la Mécanique d’Art (IMA), seem suspended in silence. Yet behind this tranquillity lies one of the most remarkable centres of mechanical art, also known as the automata, for the institute is home to the Association Mec-Art pour la Mécanique d’Art.
“Watchmaking mechanics is industry – serial production. Mechanical art is about unique pieces, for which we use entirely different methods. Some brands focus exclusively on one or the other, while others operate at the crossroads of both – like De Bethune,” explains Denis Flageollet, the cofounder of De Bethune who founded the Association Mec-Art in 2016 together with François Junod and Nicolas Court, both automaton makers.