Before being an exhibition or a book, the project of Conversations with the World is a state of mind. A desire of openness, exchange and sharing between human beings using what makes them more unique: their capacity to speak to each other, to communicate their living memory from generation to generation, to pass down stories, techniques, recipes... in other words, their oral tradition.

Therefore, the approach of Conversations with the world humbly seeks to bring people together around the emotions experienced during these unexpected encounters. It aims to build a bridge between contrasting worlds by exploiting the piercing look in one person's eye, the delicate or the rough texture in another person's voice and the depth of the oral tradition of the people.

This definite human approach invites us to share a part of a different world, following the story that
someone is telling to us. To create this feeling of conversation that enhances the emotions, we are developing a special type of exhibition using photography, sounds/voices and video elements, based on the following notions:

- Notion of distance: Improbable encounters with someone who is living far away from us, with different prospective, priorities and habits

- Notion of memory: Collection of elements of oral culture which are disappearing inexorably

- Notion of conversation: People are telling themselves stories, that we can hear in their own voice

- Notion of trust and intimacy: The conversations take place in a intimate climate of trust, respect and openness.

Children listening to the elders' stories during the La Paz exhibition.
MUSEF - National Ethnographic Museum of La Paz, Bolivia. June 2005