Photography

Calling upon chance and pursuing absence
Both author and protagonist

She had already come to Venice in semi-secrecy when she followed, from Paris, a man whom she was photographing without his knowledge (Suite vénitienne, 1980). Then, again anonymously, she worked briefly in a hotel, taking photographs of the bedrooms and personal belongings of their occupants in their absence (L’Hôtel, 1981). Today, Sophie Calle is in the city of the lagoon once more, this time entering through the front door, as the French Pavilion’s guest artist at the Biennale.

For Venice she has chosen to use a painful episode of her life for her installation. "I received a break-up e-mail. I didn’t know how to reply. It was as though it wasn’t meant for me. It ended with the words: "Take care of yourself". I took this recommendation literally. I asked 107 women, chosen for their occupation, to interpret the letter from a professional angle - to analyse it, comment on it, play with it, dance it, sing it. Dissect it. Wear it out. To understand it for me. To reply in my place. A way of taking time to break up. At my own pace. To take care of myself", she wrote in her Livre de Sophie Calle (pub. Actes Sud, Arles, 2007).

The photos and videos of the installation "Prenez soin de vous" [Take Care of Yourself] show these 107 women - some unknown, some famous - at work: Latin scholar, clown, Indian dancer, philosopher, clairvoyant, chess player, actress, medieval linguist, police superintendent, Talmudic exegete, SMS language translator, singer, diplomat, writer, etc. A criminologist creates an Identikit picture of the ex-lover, a schoolgirl writes an essay about him, a head-hunter examines his job application, a journalist writes a dispatch, etc.

Putting her own private life on display whilst getting involved in others’ lives, Sophie Calle began by photographing people in the street (Filatures parisiennes, 1978/1979) or sleeping in her bed, including actor Fabrice Luchini (Les Dormeurs, [The Sleepers], 1979). Then she hired a detective to follow her, and afterwards compared his report with her own account in her diary (La Filature [The Shadow], 1981). Since then she has continued to represent and show her own life and the lives of others, making use of chance happenings according to rules she sets herself, in an abundant and multiform body of work, somewhere between the photo-novel, private diary, confession and travel diary.

When the American writer Paul Auster took his inspiration from her for the character of Maria in Leviathan (1993), she doubled the stakes by going to live in New York like Maria, then by complying with the "Personal Instructions for Sophie Calle on How to Improve Life in New York City" written by Auster at her request (Gotham Handbook, 1994), mingling fact and fiction in the same realm.

In 2002, during Paris’s first all-nighter, or "Nuit blanche", lying in a bed on the top floor of the Eiffel Tower, she received visitors who had to keep her awake by telling her stories (Chambre avec vue [Room with a View]). In 2006, on the route of the new Paris tramway, her performance consisted of calling a phone booth from time to time (Le Téléphone, the work of American architect Frank Gehry, a sculpture in the shape of a flower installed on the Pont du Garigliano) and talking to anyone who picked up the phone.

The retrospective devoted to her in 2003-2004 by the Centre Georges-Pompidou, in Paris, "M’as-tu vue" [Did You See Me]) showed her constant pursuit of absence and her search for catharsis through art. Earlier works, the film No Sex Last Night (1992) and the book Douleur exquise [2] [Exquisite Pain] (1983-2003) were also based on the story of break-ups or disappointments in love.

A trailblazer in turning the private sphere into public display, now commonplace in TV reality shows and blogs, a spin-off, according to sociologist Anne Sauvageot, from "media culture" [3], Sophie Calle clouds the issue still further by integrating the very process of their creation into her works. Thus, "Prenez soin de vous" [Take Care of Yourself] has been turned into an installation by French contemporary artist Daniel Buren whom she recruited through a small ad in the press (looking for an "enthusiastic" exhibition organiser "with references").

At once subject and object of her work, both its author and protagonist, Sophie Calle sweeps away the borders between the real and the imaginary, between what is portrayed and what is fictional, to the point of triggering a kind of dizziness when faced with the precariously balanced mirror that she holds up to herself - and to us. Which is life, which is performance, which is art?

Monica Valby
Journalist