Sophie Calle. Art, Biography and History. 2004 1/2

www.egs.edu/ Sophie Calle lecturing about her artwork, history, biography, the relationship with her father, her studies,
private and public space,persons, following people, taking photos and writing notes. Sophie Calle, filmmaker and director and Yve-Alain Bois, art historian Harvard University. Public open video lecture for the faculty and students of the European Graduate School, Media and Communication Studies Department Program, EGS, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Europe, 2004.Sophie Calle.
Sophie Calle (born 1953) is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing.
Calle began working as an artist in the 1970s, after traveling the world for seven years. When she returned to Paris, the city in which she was born, she recalls feeling isolated and lost; this isolation inspired her to investigate the lives of the people around her. Her first photographs were of graves marked simply mother and father.
Although much of her work employs voyeurism, Calle has allowed her own life to be put on display as well. She became so intrigued by following her unwitting subjects that she wanted to reverse the relationship, and become the subject herself. She asked her mother to hire a private detective to follow her, without the detective knowing that she had arranged it, with the hopes that his investigation would provide photographic evidence of her existence.
Suite Venitienne (1979), The Sleepers, Address Book (1983), The Hotel (1983), The Blind (1986), The Mystery Guest: An Account (2006)
Faux fuyants (1983), Actress La détective, Subterfuge, Leviathan (1992), No Sex Last Night (1996) Double Blind, The Gotham Handbook (1998), In Room with a View (2003), Exquisite Pain, Detective Venice Pompidou Paris

[@zorrobaggins3202]

Uh... she followed people around the city for weeks on end taking pictures of them? There's a name for that kind of thing. Stalking. Also, private investigatiion. And now, apparently, 'art'. If I'm ever arrested for stalking, I'll just claim it was art. Hell, maybe it will also work for shoplifting.