In June 1983, the young artist Sophie Calle in Paris he discovered an address book. She copied it and sent it back without comment to its owner, Pierre D.. Then she called to the address book contained numbers and asked the people went to the phone, to meet with her so she could make a picture of the unknown owner. The out of the Call resulting Make she poured in the trenchant columns, which were published in August in the daily newspaper “Libération”. Now the Suhrkamp publishing house publishes for the first time in English.
Sophie Calle had luck with your Fund. Pierre D. was apparently such a sweet interesting Person. The people who were willing to talk about him, to draw the portrait of a friendly, eccentric bird drifted rather aimlessly through his life and the culture of Paris: Pierre D. lives at the time of the experiment alone in a adventurous full-provided apartment, and is writing new screenplays with titles like “the story of The driven flesh”. He pushes it off, seems to be very good-natured, loves the films of Lubitsch and Jerry Lewis, wanted to be an Egyptologist in his younger years, reminds one of “a character from a children’s book”, others a “Shakespeare-like character”. He is like a “cloud in trousers,” says a woman.
guilt and shame
at the Latest at this rate, everyone who still has a residual empathy in the body must, ask if he would like to read such statements about himself in one of the largest Newspapers in Europe. The question is all the more urgent, as after about three weeks, a close friend tells, Pierre D. tend to tell a novel-like stories, “in which he plays the role of the bad luck persecuted victim”. It is the suspicion that Pierre D. tends sometimes to Paranoia and mania. Would have Calle you must not cancel your project? She writes for multiple self, guilt or shame feelings would concern you, way wipes, but each Time immediately: The Experiment was just too exciting.
Even more luck Calle with your Experiment, in so far as Pierre D., just before the text series began, unaware to the North of Norway was broken up, where he gave several weeks of a Workshop. As this was before the invention of the Internet, instead, he learned only after his return from the 29 voyeuristic texts about themselves. He was indignant and published an open letter in Libération, in which he wrote how hurt he was. Calle had given neither his address nor his last name price, but anyone who knew him even remotely, know that it was him. In revenge, he had obtained a Nude photo of Calle, and the newspaper is forced to publish this image in return his Text.
this bumbling kind of revenge shows how unequal power relationships: Calle played in your work from the beginning with transgressions, indiscretions, and the question of the limits of the Private. She had worked for a while as a stripper and pictures from it published. What makes a naked picture of her? Basically, it only completes her work, it always goes back to the border of privacy. Pierre D. felt, however, abused. You can’t could blame him 35 years later, hardly, on the contrary, actually, you come out of the Amazement, like a reputable newspaper at the time of such a project to join in.
of Course, the Whole aesthetic is apart. Everything was based on a chance find. And in the beginning it was pure coincidence, for whom the journey in the direction of Pierre D. should begin. This contingency coupled Calle in their texts with pedantic meticulousness. Similar to a private detective she met a day, one Person, noted the Name and time of the meeting and gave the Whole the painting of officially-Protocol Strict. If you like, you can the short-circuiting of their concept art, the in the beginning is always a structural rule of the game stand. The comment photos shown are also always the question of what to actually see in the newspaper pictures.
the first photo really Shows the found address book? It has Calle actually found? Picturesque next to a bistro table? And the girl on the second picture? This is Sophie Calle? Almost symbolically exhibited, and at the same time covered? What is documentary, what is fiction?
Pierre D. was called Pierre Baudry
As always, in the centre of this work, a person who was never asked what he thinks of the Experiment, around his identity. Pierre D., was, in truth, Pierre Baudry, which decreed, that the work during his lifetime may not be or printed shown. He worked as a documentary filmmaker and passed away in 2005.
In all the years in between was just a fictional track of the factory: Paul Auster sat Sophie Calle is a monument, by letting in “Leviathan”, an artist named Maria Turner, the designed louder works, in which she muses over the questions of privacy and confidentiality, identity, and the Public. One of the described works is called “The book”.
in the Meantime, The address book should be shown “” and so it is now available in the elegant Translation by Sabine Erbrich. Sophie Calle does not seem to regret the Whole thing until today. “The only work that I went too far, “The address book”,” she said in an Interview in 2009. “But I’d do it again – the charm is much bigger than the guilt.”
Created: 29.11.2019, 18:45 PM
