Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle is an artist Plasticien, Photographe, écrivaine and French director, born with Paris the October 9th 1953. For more than thirty years, its work of artist has consisted in making his life, in particular the most intimate moments, its work by using all the possible supports (books, photographs, vidéos, films, performances…).

Biography

After having travelled seven years throughout the world, Sophie Calle returns to Paris. Lost, without community project, precise capacity, friends, it decides to follow the unknown ones in the street, like finding Paris through the ways of the others. Soon, it is caught with the play, photographs, note its displacements, chooses a man randomly and decides to follow it to Paris then to Venice. Later, the remark of a friend on the tepidity of cloths, when it lies down near it, gives him the idea to invite people randomly taken to come to sleep a few hours in its bed.

In 1979, “by play”, Sophie Calle thus requires of different unknown (or friends and entourage when it had not found anybody, or itself when a sleeper made him false-jump) to come to pass a certain number of hours in its bed so that this one is occupied without stopping eight days during, while agreeing to be photographed and to answer some questions. It takes stereotypes of the sleepers - among whom the actor Fabrice Luchini - and conscientiously notes the details important components of these short meetings: subjects of discussion, positions of the sleepers, their movements during their sleep, the detailed menu of the breakfast that it prepared to them. This work, heading the Sleepers , holds the attention of the critic Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, husband of the one of the sleepers; it invites it to the Biennale young people of Paris in 1980. “Makes some, says Sophie Calle, it is him which decided that I was an artist. ”

Consequently, the work of Sophie Calle seeks to create footbridges between art and the life. In the shape of installations, photographs, accounts, of vidéos and films, the artist builds situations associating, according to the formula of Christine Macel, “an image and a narration, around a play or of an autobiographical ritual, which tries to entreat the anguish of the absence, while creating a relation with the other controlled by the artist”.

Its written photographs and its reports, borrowing the descriptive style of the report or the inventory, attest the reality of the situations which it creates: chambermaid in a hotel, stripper in a fun fair, continuation of a man with Venice, etc Often founded on rules and constraints, her works question the porous limit between public sphere and private sphere and the interchangeable character of the positions of the Peeping Tom and the exhibitionist one. The topic of the disappearance of people or objects, whose existence is proven by some traces and whose absence is recorded by photography, also constitutes a topic of predilection of the artist.

It is characterized by a provocative spirit. It was for example the first photographer to present an exposure… of which it had not taken itself only one photograph: she had asked an agency of private detectives to take it in spinning mill and to take it in photograph without her knowledge. They are these photographs of it which it exposed.

Work of Sophie Calle is also characterized by the setting in scene of the artist itself. Sophie Calle uses most of the time the accounts of stories which she lived ( True stories ).

An ordering of work in situ that a bank had made him ends after fifteen years of projects, research and vain attempts to a work telling its failure: To finish of It (partly so that all these years and all this last time precisely do not lead to " rien" , and thus to avoid a total failure). Indeed Sophie Calle acknowledges not to have known how to use the images of Vidéo-surveillance vending machine to create a typical work of her art, and that mainly because it was not about matter extracted with its own life with its own daily newspaper.

It “finishes some” thus with this project by using its personal manner to approach the images and by showing some a great part without to have acted above. In this book, she tells her advance, her attempts, her false routes, the assistance which she could ask Jean Baudrillard or even with its banking…

One systematically finds this explanatory relationship between the texts and the photographs of Sophie Calle, whom she tells the history, the step which is in the beginning or even the consequences which followed this photograph.

Finally Sophie Calle leaves an important place to the spectator since it is recurring in his works which it can have access to his intimacy ( Diaries , psychological Évaluation ) or although it makes it take an active part in creation ( Fantômes ).

Another important topic that Sophie Calle milked is the absence ( Last Seen , Fantômes , the Blind men ). She worked this topic with true various facts. An young woman, Benedicte, disappeared mysteriously, it was agent of reception to Beaubourg and also photographer and appreciated much his work. Friends send to him newspaper cuttings of this disappearance. Sophie Calle waits one year then puts himself on her trace, fortuitously meets her mother, etc It finally exposes to Beaubourg her own photographs frays with those of disappeared.

In the editions Actes Sud, Sophie Calle published many books. The Center Georges-Pompidou devoted an exposure entitled to him you saw Me in 2004. Director of the film No Sex Last Night , it regularly exposes her work in galleries of Contemporary art.

At the time of the inauguration of the line 3 of the Parisian Tram, in December 2006, it imagines one of nine works ordered to accompany the layout by it (at the sides of Angella Bulloch, Christian Boltanski, Peter Kloger, Claude Lévêque). This work, entitled the Telephone , is a Phone box carved in form of Fleur by the architect Frank Gehry, not having an other function only to receive its calls: it was indeed committed calling this cabin several times per week to speak with the passer by which will want to take down well.

It represents France with the Biennale de Venise from June 10th to November 21st, 2007 with its works Prenez care of you , a letter of rupture received by Sophie Calle and read by 107 women, and Pas been able to seize death , a video realized at the time of the death of her mother having corresponded with her invitation to represent France with the biennial one.

Principal works

Below a brief presentation of principal works of Sophie Calle follows. Many marks its taste for the play: with itself, with the spectator, that-even which looks at it, neither it nor its works; its taste of the play within our company and with this one.

Parisian Spinning mills (1978/1979): Sophie Calle followed the unknown ones in the street, noted their displacements and photographed them without their knowledge " for the pleasure of following them and not because they me intéressaient" she in one of the diaries writes that it held during these spinning mills.

Venetian Continuation (1980): An unknown which it followed in the streets of Paris him is one day presented. He teaches him that he leaves on a journey to Venice, she then decides to follow it there in spinning mill over there. Photographs, and descriptive account still.

the Ritual of birthday (1980-1993): Each year for her birthday, the exact day if possible, Sophie Calle organized a festival of birthday where it invited a number of guests equivalent to the number of years, of which an unknown invited by one of the guests. For each birthday it constituted a window containing the gifts offered (they are not truths gifts which is used there). On the panes of the windows descriptions of the gifts offered are registered. This ritual is presented and finds a curious development in the account the Guest mystery of Gregoire Bouillier.

Bronx (1980): The gallery " Fashion Moda" propose with the artist a draft report with the district. Sophie Calle asks the unknown ones to take it along in places of the district which they like or which one a strong significance for them, it photographs and writes the accounts of unknown on these places. The exposure day before a “unexpected collaborator”, as it calls it, enters by effraction and covers the gallery of graffiti… the exposure is presented thus.

the Spinning mill (April 1981): Sophie Calle asks her mother to engage a private detective and to ask him to follow her daughter. Sophie exposes then the work of the detective: photographs of it and the description of its comings and goings. It puts in parallel the description of its days that it held during these days when it was known followed.

In Twenty years after (2001) the topic and the principle is taken again. The friend of the artist Emmanuel Perrotin, having believed to give him pleasure of this attention, orders a spinning mill of Sophie to celebrate " the year; of this experiment. At the beginning reticent, it accepts finally, and lends itself to the play by holding a kind of newspaper describing its activities lasting this spinning mill.

the Hotel (February 1981): The artist spent one year to be canvassed before obtaining a place of chambermaid in a Venetian hotel: a three weeks replacement. She saw herself entrusting twelve rooms on the fourth floor. During the time which its mission lasted it observed and photographed the personal effects of people who were of passage in his rooms like their provisional installations in these places (bathrooms, contained demolished dustbins, closets, beds…).

the Address book (1983): having found an address book in full street, Sophie Calle ingéniée himself to meet with people being reproduced on the notebook in order to draw up the portrait of the owner of the notebook. Thereafter an exposure on this subject was prohibited by the person owner of the address book.

Anatoli (1984): Sophie Calle takes the Transsibérien which connects Moscow to Vladivostok in October 1984. She divides there her compartment with a Russian man named Anatoli. They do not speak the same language and are included/understood little but at the end of the voyage she knows the essence of her life. She describes this meeting and matches it photographs.

the Angels (1984): Sophie Calle on a journey to Los Angeles to complete a work " in situ " during does the Olympic Games, require of inhabitants “since Los Angeles is literally the city of the angels, where are the angels? ”. Photographs and answers of these inhabitants.

the Blind men (1986): The artist met people who were born blind, which never saw. She asked them which was for them the image of the beauty and photographed them.

True stories (1988-2003): Sophie Calle writes very short accounts telling each one one period an event, a change of her life. It illustrates each account of a photograph where it is often, itself, put in scene.

Phantom : In June 1989, Sophie Calle benefitted from the absence of the Nu in the bath of Bonnard, lent by the museum of Modern art of the town of Paris, to ask the people met (employed museum, visitors) to describe this table… In October 1991, she repeated the experiment with the Musée of modern art of New York, with five tables of Magritte, Modigliani, De Chirico, Hopper and Seurat.

the color Plugs (1991): The artist requested from blind men what they perceived and she confronted their descriptions with texts of artists (Klein, Richter, Reinhard, Manzoni) on the monochromic one.

Last Seen (1991): The artist photographed the absence of objects (their site of origin) in a museum where works had been subtilized.

No Sex Last Night in collaboration with Greg Shephard (1992): Sophie Calle had had a companion for one year, but their relation was degraded, they did not speak itself more. She wanted to cross America, and to involve it in its tour, to him the idea has just proposed to him to make a film (since the aforementioned companion was set on cinema). The rules of the game were the following one: each one had at its disposal a camera to which they were to entrust all their frustrations during the voyage. At the conclusion of the voyage they married.

Gotham Handbook in collaboration with Paul Auster (1994): this work always mixing testimonys, photographs of the artist and accounts of meetings, experiments… is the result of a " contrat" (including/understanding various clauses imposed on Miss Calle) last between Sophie Calle and Paul Auster. Indeed Paul Auster had written Léviathan , published in the editions Actes Sud, in which it had been authorized by Sophie Calle “to mix reality and the fiction”. “It indeed made use of certain episodes of my life to create, between pages 84 and 93 of its account, a character of fiction named Maria, who then leaves me to live her own history” tells the artist. Sophie Calle thus drew the idea from it to operate contrary to fictitious creation to Paul Auster and to try to resemble to the character of Maria. Paul Auster prefers to send " personal instructions for Sophie Calle… " , and it then respected its directives. What gave its Chromatic Régime , where as Maria the artist composed, photographed and consumed a whole menu including/understanding only one color per day; or Of the whole days under the sign of B, C, of W , where the artist spent the days under these different signs.

Érouv of Jerusalem (1996): the Artist asked inhabitants of Jerusalem, Israelis and Palestinian, to take it along in public places, having with their eyes, a private character. (In connection with the Jewish Law which dictates to remain at home lasting Shabbat. But manners having evolved/moved, the creation of the érouv, a wire tended between pylons, delimit a framework deprived to obey this rule while having the possibility of leaving at home.)

Appointement with Sigmund Freud (1998): Invited to expose in the house which S. Freud occupied before its death, Sophie Calle introduces into this interior of the objects who have a sentimental significance for it and of which it was useful for its account autobiographical.

Room with sight (2002): The night from October 5th to 6th 2002 (a " Sleepless night " organized each year by the town of Paris) Sophie Calle was made install a room on the fourth floor of the Eiffel Tower. It spent the night in a bed in this room where it invited hundreds of people one by one to come to tell him stories to make it take care until 7:00 of the morning.

Voyage in California (2003) with the collaboration of Josh Greene: in June 1999 an young man California N written in Sophie Calle to ask for the permission to him of come to it to be restored of a unhappy love affair by occupying its bed. The artist, favorable to this experiment but fearing not to appreciate this man whom she does not know and fearing not to dare the congédier, sends his bed to him as well as cloths in which she slept. The young man essuie his sorrow in this bed and returns in February 2000 to him.

psychological Evaluation on an idea of Damien Hirst (2003): Sophie Calle knows Damien Hirst since 1989, it met it with Glasgow. The evening of their meeting she asks him to write a love letter to him. She receives later five ignited pages “whereas they hardly knew each other”. One year later Damien Hirst requires of him to interview it for a catalog of exposure, but it is not available then it proposes to him to invent the questions that it could have posed to him. The fictitious interview is published. When, twelve years later, the situation arises (Sophie Calle asks Damien Hirst to interview it for the catalog of its exposure to the Center Pompidou) it sends a psychological questionnaire to him to fill by her and of the members of his family. The analysis by psychiatrists of these questionnaires will be published with the questionnaires. An interview of the artist will be made for the catalog by Christine Macel.

References

Sources

Sophie Calle Me you saw , Éditions of the Center Pompidou, Éditions Xavier Barral, Paris, 2003

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