Major Project Influences (9) - Sophie Calle and Book Review: 'Double Game' (Violette Editions, 2007)

Sophie Calle is a French conceptual artist, producing works and installations of a personal and/or autobiographical nature and using photographs to document her art. Her works often take the form of rituals and frequently involve interactions with others on streets in cities, detective work, journeys and performance incorporating arbitrary rules, recorded in intimate detail and in a self-deprecatory manner. However her style is, as far as I am aware, unique and impossible to categorise. I first came across her art at the ‘Walk On’ exhibition in Birmingham a few years ago, where the text and photographs of ‘Suite Venitienne’ (see below) were pasted along approximately forty feet of wall space. Fascinated by her pseudo-detective story, I spent half an hour reading through it from start to finish. The book ‘Double Game’ contains ‘Suite Venitienne’, together with several others of her best known works. The book references American author Paul Auster’s 1992 novel ‘Leviathan’, in which a number of her earlier works are used by Auster in creating a fictional character called Maria. These works are all included in ‘Double Game’. Auster created some additional rules for Maria to follow and Calle used these rules to produce further conceptual works. Finally Calle went to New York and invited Auster to invent some new rules for her to follow, in performance, in the city. The resultant work of art, ‘Gotham City’, concludes the book.

Calle has borrowed one or two of the ideas from Auster’s book and introduced them into her own art, but the bulk of this book consists of the photographs and text from some of her best known art works, including ‘The Striptease’, ‘Suite Venitienne’, ‘The Detective’, ‘The Address Book’ and ‘The Birthday Ceremony’, which are all referenced in Auster’s work.

In ‘The Striptease’ Calle mentions how, at the age of six, she used to undress in an elevator on the way to the sixth floor of the block of flats where she lived with her grandparents and run naked along the corridor to their flat entrance. In 1979, twenty years later, she was performing striptease on the stage of a strip club, not far from her grandparents’ home. The performance was recorded for her on camera (early stage: Image 1).

Image 1 (Sophie Calle)

Why she chose to do this, even as a way of producing performance art, is not covered in the book (although Auster presents some possible causes in his own book, a section of which [relating to Maria] is incorporated into Calle’s book). However, Calle’s audacity at taking on this role, presumably mainly for the sake of art, characterises much of her work.

In ‘Suite Venitienne’ (1981) Calle acts out one of her favourite roles, playing the detective as she visits Venice to find and then follow a man whom she had met at an opening shortly beforehand. Having discovered where he is staying she follows and photographs him as he moves around the city (Image 2). What I find particularly interesting about this work is how the seemingly bland and uninspiring documentary photographs cleverly combine with the text to immerse the viewer in an atmospheric and intense adventure.

Image 2 (Sophie Calle)

In ‘The Birthday Ceremony’ (1980-1993) Calle decided that, every year on her birthday, she would invite the number of people corresponding to her age, including one complete stranger chosen by one of her guests, to dinner. She kept her presents from these occasions, showcasing and photographing them every year (Image 3). However, it appears that the ritual was frequently interrupted, due to her need to attend events elsewhere around the time of her birthday as her fame (notoriety?) grew. She eventually abandoned the ritual on her 40^th birthday.

Image 3: Birthday Presents 1985 (Sophie Calle)

The final section of the book deals with a project, entitled ‘Gotham Handbook’, in which Auster asked Calle to carry out “personal instructions for S C on how to improve life in New York City”. These included smiling at and talking to strangers, performing small acts of kindness towards beggars and homeless people and cultivating and beautifying a small spot on the streets of the city, imbuing it with her own identity. Calle’s interpretations of these instructions, which included taking over and decorating the right half of a double phone booth (Image 4), are described in some detail. The end of the project came shortly after the telephone company returned the booth to its original state.

Image 4 (Sophie Calle)

I really enjoyed reading this book. Sophie Calle stretches conceptual art to its limits (if, indeed, there are limits) in these works and yet makes her art very accessible. She is undoubtedly a ‘one off’, perhaps very difficult to understand or to relate to but also incredibly creative. I admire the bare-faced cheek and bravado of some of her works, which sometimes lead her into deep trouble. She writes well and her photographs, superficially bland, run together with the text describing her projects to create atmosphere and emotion, apparently without effort.

What can I take from this book to inform and enhance my own work? Perhaps the most important learning point is that the intelligent combination of text and a portfolio of photographs can be used to not only document an event but also to provoke interest and emotion in the viewer.