Take Care of Yourself

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Rachel Monique. Couldn’t Capture Death’ (2007). Photograph: Sophie Calle/Adagp, Paris & ARS, New York, 2017, Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, Fraenkel Gallery and Galerie Perro In his novel Leviathan, American author Paul Auster based a character, Maria, on Sophie Calle. He was inspired by her work and when he sent her his manuscript to ask permission to fictionalize her, Calle says, "I never thought about saying no."

Was she looking for revenge? "No. And a fear that it might be interpreted like that initially made me hesitate." I go to make some coffee, forget to put coffee in the machine, try again. While the journalist pulls a notebook from his bag I have another go at the kitchen floor. I’m not paranoid, I assure him. Or obsessive-compulsive, he says. I ask if he intends to write our conversation up as a set of questions and answers. I dislike that style; when I read these interviews, I never know myself: it’s not my language. He says his preference is for a proper narrative, though the magazine sometimes favours the Q&A approach. We can always pretend, I tell him, that I insisted on a real text, that that was the first rule of the game. He laughs, says it won’t be necessary: he will find a form.I thought that would be enough, I thought that loving you and your love would be enough so that this anxiety – which constantly drives me to look further afield and which meens that I will never feel quiet and at rest or probably even just happy or “generous”- would be calmed when I was with you, with the certainty that the love you have for me was the best for me, the best I have ever had , you know that. I thought that my writing would be a remedy, that my “disquiet” would dissolve into it so that i could find you. But no. Infact it even became worse, I cannot even tell you the sort of state I feel I am in. so I started calling the “others” again this week. Much of Calle's work is comprised of actions, sometimes taking extended periods of time to enact, absorb, and analyze. The physical evidence of the actions becomes the "artwork" - usually documentary photographs and explanatory texts presented with a coolly detached analyst's eye. Nicol, Yann (September 2, 2006). "Experiential Lit: Grégoire Bouillier with Yann Nicol Translated by Violaine Huisman and Lorin Stein". The Brooklyn Rail.

For the passerby, Calle’s work may seem to be a collection rather than artwork, although this is very subjective. There are stereotypes and perimeters in art as there are in any aspect of our lives: “The difference with so many of Calle’s works: ‘is the fact that they are also a part of’… her …‘life. They happened.’ This manipulation of experiences and thought is modified by an element of chance, of following the outcome. Sophie Calle (born 9 October 1953) [1] is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. [2] Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like tendency to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing. [3]

Critical Perspectives on Art, Politics and Culture

CALLE: He began by telling me that he loved my work but that many of my shows looked like open books on the wall.

A researcher in lexometry, a writer, a translator, an ethno-methodologist thinking of the ramifications of technology on our speech—all digest the affair’s disclosure with restrained forms of commentary, including footnotes, torn paper, highlighted marginal notes and mapping. A criminologist, judge, journalist, headhunter, and accountant offer more steely objectifications.Maybe he’s already decided how he’s going to write about me, how to explain me. Maybe he hopes it will be like the time my writer friend Hervé Guibert interviewed me, and asked me if I was born in 1953, and I told my whole life story, spoke for five hours straight, gave him everything. Or perhaps he has in mind a tale, a fiction, in which case it will be as though he were never here at all. One of France's leading Conceptual artists, Calle's life and work redefines the role of the artist or author. Her influence can be seen in the work of later "first-person" artists, whose lives and art are also intertwined, including Chris Kraus, Tracey Emin, and Amalia Ulman. As journalist Mary Kaye Schilling notes: "Even Taylor Swift's boyfriend-dishing pop songs owe something to Calle. Consciously or not, her influence is everywhere." Sophie Calle’s book entitled ‘Take care of yourself’ was published by Actes Sud Press on June 1st, 2007 (4 dvd and two leaflefts are inserted). The result of this exercise is a microscopic look at a breakup, carefully dissecting each possible meaning of the different parts of a farewell note, by means of photographic portraits, written studies and video performances expressing different ideas on love, pain, sex and identity.

Hillstrom, Laurie Collier (1999). Contemporary Women Artists. Farmington Hills, MI: St. James Press. pp. 107–110. ISBN 1-55862-372-8. CALLE: These women each took their job very seriously, but they were also playing with me. I wanted to avoid any pathos or pathology. I really enjoyed it, for example, when the whole discussion would turn around a single comma, like the philologist, who discusses the world existing between two sets of quotation marks. The more detailed and specific the analysis, the more I liked it. I could have gone on and on. There was no reason to stop—other than the opening date of the Venice Pavilion!

In each of these exhibits of text and image, Calle’s interpolates the evidence, but with no conclusive results, only silk-screened echoes: important data is circled in red, or words from the document underneath plate glass are lifted out and printed on top of it, hovering above the artifact. Here too, as in “X’s” treatment, the hand is distanced by the medium of silk-screen, so that responses never get too touchy. The RPS Annual Awards 2019". rps.org. Archived from the original on 2019-09-05 . Retrieved 2019-09-06. The sheer variety of responses, from the potentially illuminating to the absurd, all adhere to Calle's use of a conceptual constraint. In this instance, it involved the artist taking the letter's advice at its word - to take care of her self - via 107 different interpretations. The constraints, or rules, that Calle uses as starting points often allow for chance results, and as here, often make public the artist's emotional life. In this instance, Calle turns a humiliating rejection into a liberating celebration of feminine solidarity. CALLE: Yes and no. At one moment I thought to work with a psychiatrist on memory problems, but I never did it. In theory, I could be tempted to work with anybody if the idea is good.