SOPHIE CALLE

“On Monday, February 16, 1981, after a year of trying and waiting, I was finally hired as a temporary chambermaid for three weeks, in a Venetian hotel: Hotel C.
I was assigned twelve bedrooms on the fourth floor.
In the course of my cleaning duties, I examined the personal belongings of the hotel guests and the way this succession of people staying in the same room set up their temporary homes. I observed through details lives which remained unknown to me.
On Friday March 6, the job came to an end.” Sophie Calle: L’Hôtel, 1981

The project of Sophie Calle: L’Hôtel caught my eyes for its beautiful simplicity in detailing life of strangers. In 1981, the artist—visual ethnographer, detective and fiction storyteller—Sophie Calle surveys a population in transit. By capturing traces of living being in transit, and appropriating evidences “She transgresses the boundaries between public and private, fact and fiction.” [1]

If I am not yet getting into the notion of objectivity, I would like to stress the interest of such a project to me who is developing a method to explore, describe and analyze people’s habits, in transitional spaces like hotel rooms. Statistical data can hardly inform you about the psychological and the emotional level of people on the move, and to what extent and how they get attached (or detached) to the built environment.

However, all the work is amazing! If you haven’t been to the Centre Georges Pompidou exhibit: SOPHIE CALLE M’AS-TU VUE held in 2003-2004, it is always time to track her :) or have a look at the book!

[1] Sophie Calle, a Survey; Exhibit curated by Deborah Irmas for the Fred Hoffman Gallery