Exit : The Image of the Present

In its first year at the Palais-Royal, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain presents Exposition Générale, an unprecedented selection from the Fondation Cartier Collection, introducing into the cultural heart of Paris disciplines and perspectives often underrepresented in museums, including architecture and urbanism, nature, science, and technology. 

From this perspective, Exit: The Image of the Present explores the evolving role of the museum and reflects in the future of humanities. It examines how data can function as a living archive that reveals the interconnected environmental, political, and economic forces to understand the contemporary world. 

The symposium takes as its point of departure the immersive installation Exit (2008-2025), presented within “Un monde réel”, one of the sections of Exposition Générale. The work draws on the theories of philosopher Paul Virilio regarding contemporary human population movements in response to climate change. 
 
Exit consists of six animated maps derived from scientific data and interpreted by a transdisciplinary team. Philosophers, statisticians, artists, and architects collaborate to construct a narrative in which climate change emerges not only as an environmental issue, but also as a political and architectural one. 

Originally commissioned by the Fondation Cartier in 2008 as part of the exhibition Terre Natale, Ailleurs Commence Ici, Exit became part of the Fondation Cartier collection in 2012. The installation was then shown the following year in Copenhagen as part of COP15, then considered a pivotal moment that might have established a political framework to prevent a two-degree rise in global temperatures. In 2010, a new map was added to the installation for the inauguration of the Alhóndiga Bilbao (now known as the Azkuna Zentroa), in collaboration with anthropologist Bruce Albert and several contributors from around the world: “Deforestation and Endangered Languages”. In 2015, Exit was completely updated and presented at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris for COP21. Re-updated in 2025 for the inaugural exhibition of the Fondation Cartier new premises, Exit critically examines both our world and the ways in which we represent it. 

By foregrounding transdisciplinarity in design and highlighting its central role within the emerging science of ecology, Exit stands as a major work within Exposition Générale and the Fondation Cartier Collection. 

The symposium extends this inquiry by bringing together scholars, historians, scientists, journalists, and architects to engage with the contemporary issues mapped in Exit, while fostering new alliances between museums and universities.