Bøger af Sophie Calle

'I received an email telling me it was over. I didn't know how to respond. It was as if it wasn't meant for me. It ended with the words: Take Care of Yourself. I took this recommendation literally. I asked a hundred and two women, chosen for their profession, to interpret the letter in their professional capacity. To analyse it, provide a commentary on it, act it, dance it, sing it. Dissect it. Squeeze it dry. Understand for me. Answer for me. It was a way to take the time to break up. At my own pace. A way to take care of myself.'

"Originally published in French by Actes Sud in 1998. Originally published in English by Violette Editions, London in the book Double Game by Sophie Calle, 1999"--Colophon.

Between 1978 and 1981, Sophie Calle went on a clandestine exploration of the then abandoned Hotel du Palais d'Orsay. She selected room 501 as her home and without any pre-established method, set about photographing the abandoned hotel over 5 years. As she explored, she picked up items she found: room numbers, customer reception cards, old telephones, diaries, messages addressed to a certain "Oddo" and more besides. What happened to room 501? More than 40 years later it has disappeared and an elevator has taken its place. At the invitation of Donatien Grau, the Musee d'Orsay curator, Sophie Calle returned, equipped with a flashlight, to explore the site again during the lockdown period. She hunted down the ghosts of the Palais d'Orsay, now connected to the present by the visitors that had also deserted the museum. The work reconstructs the artist's archive of photography, letters, invoices and other daily items which bring a forgotten past back to life. To provide commentary on her discoveries, Sophie Calle called upon the archaeologist Jean-Paul Demoule, who writes a series of texts combining fact and fiction. All this evidence has been assembled together to create an objet d'art which resembles an investigation notebook.

The haunting story of Sophie Calle's mother, told through diary excerpts and family photographs"She was called successively Rachel, Monique, Szyndler, Calle, Pagliero, Gonthier, Sindler," reads the first lines of Sophie Calle: Rachel Monique, embroidered on the cover. "My mother liked people to talk about her. Her life did not appear in my work, and that annoyed her. When I set up my camera at the bottom of the bed in which she lay dying--fearing that she would pass away in my absence, whereas I wanted to be present and hear her last words--she exclaimed, 'Finally.'" Sophie Calle: Rachel Monique tells the story of Monique Szyndler, Sophie Calle's mother who died in 2007, through diary excerpts and photographs selected by the artist from family albums. Described as "haunting" and "a mystery novel that tirelessly searches for a missing person," the Rachel Monique project honors a daughter's complicated relationship with her mother and the artist's deeply felt grief. This volume, presenting Calle's installation of Rachel Monique at the Palais de Tokyo, was designed in close collaboration with the artist. The cover text is embroidered to create a precious object, and all of the texts relating to the installation are beautifully embossed. Sophie Calle: Rachel Monique is a highly personal and moving book, intimate and universal in its expressions of mourning and memory.

In 'See the Sea', Sophie Calle invited inhabitants of Istanbul, who often originated from central Turkey, to see the sea for the first time. The exhibition of the same name was presented at the Méjan Chapel in Arles during summer 2012, then at the Galerie Perrotin in Paris, 8 September to 27 October 2012, before visiting Japan in 2013. The exhibition comprises fourteen 5-minute videos by Caroline Champetier. Each person is filmed from behind, facing the sea. Listening to the distant sound of waves, we are simultaneously also invited to gaze at the sea. After several minutes the person filmed turns around to face the camera, revealing the emotions the experience has procured. Based on the exhibition, the catalogue features photographs of the people, brought together by a single event: 'In Istanbul, a city surrounded by sea, I met people who had never seen it and filmed them for the first time.' Sophie Calle once more refers the gaze back to its own experiences, reminding us that even the simplest things in life can be exceptional, while inviting us to rediscover our daily lives.