Midway between performance and happening, a photographic report and fiction, what Sophie is simply staging her incredible existence. “Life is not fantasy. So why not change it?” Prompted by this simple interrogative, Sophie multiplies her experiences, living them in a destabilizing manner and pushing them beyond the bourgeois habits she grew up with. Starting from when, as a young girl, she began undressing in the lift, crossing the threshold of her home completely naked.
Her work (a bit like her life) is hard to classify: part picture-story, part investigation, it is made of sentimental break-ups and disappearances. Too audacious and perfect to be true, too muddled to be all constructed on paper. In 1980, for instance, Calle decided to follow a stranger she had met at a party in Venice and continued to photograph him for a fortnight. In 1992, she crossed America with a travelling companion, equipped with a video camera, with which they share their most intimate thoughts. Then, during the first Nuit Blanche in Paris, she installed herself at the top of the Eiffel tower and, lying on a large bed, asked visitors to tell her a story to keep her awake.
until 15.3.2004
Sophie Calle M'as-tu vue
Centre Pompidou
Place Georges Pompidou, Paris
http://www.centrepompidou.fr
