The To tell a story exhibition brings together photographs, objects and sound devices by Laurent Montaron. It is conceived as a reflection on the way in which we engage with the world through narratives. It includes a series of photographs taken in the birthplaces of ancient philosophy around the Mediterranean basin: nearly 2,500 years ago, the pre-Socratic philosophers were the first in the West to seek an objective description of reality, basing themselves on their observations rather than myths.

Paradoxically, this search for truth has reached us only through quotations and reported texts, and it is therefore thanks to stories that we know the origin of our rational thought.

Susan Sontag pointed out as long ago as 1983 in her television interview To tell a story that the notion of narration refers to two diametrically opposed definitions: on the one hand, it is about reporting facts, while on the other, it is about creating fiction. The exhibition explores this ambivalent function of narrative in the form of an archaeology of representations that puts into perspective the omnipresence of images and storytelling today.

At a time when our beliefs are more attached than ever to the stories with which we identify, and when, in the wake of social networks and algorithms devoted to the attention economy, various narratives coexist to the point of replacing the facts. The artist’s works invite us to think about what makes a shared experience of the world possible: the images prompt reflection on the uncertainty of the world we know through storytelling while the abstract patterns of the sound pieces can only be perceived through a raw experience of the present.