The images presented are montages of elements retrieved from the web. Affirming this gesture of appropria- tion, the Before Present watermark is printed like a copyright. Here, the expression, abbreviated BP, is used in the scientific world as a temporal referent for carbon-14 dating. It also refers to the past of Renaud Layrac, who, as part of the BP group in the late '80s, questioned the place of the artist in a society dominated by multinationals deaf to social and ecological issues. Before Present also expresses the opposition between the long time frame of the planet and its history, and the immediacy of a contemporary world governed by speed.

Paul Virilio, interviewed in 2009 about his exhibition "Ce qui arrive" at the Fondation Cartier, said: "We live in the conviction that we have a past and a future. But the past doesn't pass, it has become mon-truthful, to the point where we no longer refer to it. As for the future, it is limited by the ecological question, the programmed end of natural resources such as oil. That leaves the present to inhabit. But as the writer Octavio Paz once said, "The present is uninhabitable, as is the future. That's what we're experiencing right now...".

So where do we want to be: before or after the catastrophe?