Laurent Montaron | To tell a story
To tell a story
As part of his artistic residency and an educational project with students at the school. This summer, Laurent Montaron is presenting an exhibition at the ENSP as part of the Rencontres d’Arles 2024, from 1 July to 29 September 2024.
Laurent Montaron’s films, photographs, objects and installations probe how our attitudes and understanding of the world have evolved along with the history of image and sound technologies. The exhibition extends this research in the form of an archaeology of representations. He questions our belief systems and our adherence to narratives, particularly with a series of photographs taken in the places where ancient philosophy was born, along the shores of the Mediterranean basin. This search for philosophical truth has filtered down to us uniquely in the form of quotes and reported texts. Paradoxically, these narratives are the origins of our rational thought.
As Susan Sontag pointed out as long ago as 1983 in her television interview To Tell a Story, the concept of narrative refers to two diametrically opposed definitions: on the one hand, it consists in reporting facts, while on the other, it implies the creation of fiction. Today, images and narratives have become omnipresent.
Because our beliefs are attached to stories with which we identify, various narratives coexist and have taken the place of facts. This exhibition unfurls through photographs, objects and sound apparatuses, inviting us to put this ambivalent function of narration into perspective. It confronts an immediate sound experience with reflections on the idea of the story, questioning the complex modes and forms of transmission.
This exhibition project was initiated by artist-teacher Gilles Saussier as part of an educational project involving five students: Mathis Clodic, Marion Genty, Gaspard Labastie, Charlotte Van de Walle and Baptiste Vitorino.
The project gave rise to various workshops, exchanges and meetings with the artist.
Production by École nationale supérieure de la photographie and Les Rencontres d’Arles
free entry until the 29th of septembre 2024
from 10 a.m to 7:30 p.m
Laurent Montaron (b. 1972 Verneuil sur Avre, lives and works between Saulchery and Paris) is an interdisciplinary artist working across film, photography, installation, sound and performance. His works draw from the history of technology to examine systems of belief, investigating the ways in which innovations have continually given rise to new ways of observing and understanding the world. Through his critical invistigations of the media and tools that shape our representations, his work lays bare the paradoxes that accompany our awarness of modernity.
He has participated in numerous exhibitions internationally including: EPPUR SI MUOVE, MUDAM, Luxembourg, 2015; You imagine what you desire, 19th Biennale of Sydney, 2014; The Encyclopedic Palace, 55th Venice Biennale, 2013; Open End- Goetz Collection, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Lost in LA, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Barnsdall Art Park, Los Angeles, all 2012.
©Laurent Montaron. Le Caÿstre, 2024. Avec l’aimable autorisation de l’artiste.
©Laurent Montaron. Le Caÿstre, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
©Laurent Montaron. Porte de l’amphithéâtre de Milet, 2024. Avec l’aimable autorisation de l’artiste.
©Laurent Montaron. Porte de l’amphithéâtre de Milet, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.