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Prenez soin de vous
Dec. 15th, 2009 08:55 pmSophie Calle at the Whitechapel.
In the main room, 'Take care of yourself', the break-up e-mail she received and submitted to more than a hundred other women with various specialisms for interpretation. Outsourcing emotional analysis on an unprecedented scale.
My favourite was the video piece of the cockatoo who is given the e-mail on paper. It chews it, shreds it, finds no nutritional value and lets it fall to the floor. At one point it says something that is subtitled as: "I never lied to you".
For the most part the qualified jurists are in compliance with the spirit of the exercise twice over. They approach the text from the perspective of their discipline: from the expert on the 18th C: "He must surely have lived in the eighteenth century!"; a graphic designer folds a printout of the message into a bird shape; a graduate of the Ecole Normale submits the letter to close, dry, grinding analysis. Many also perform as would any other selection of acquaintances outside of the contexts of art and science: their responses supportive, with undertones of "Men, eh?".
Only one truly steps out of line, a late contribution to the potlatch, who has clearly seen what has gone before her: "The choir you have formed around this letter is the choir of death."
Elsewhere:
A man has written to her from California, asking to spend the grieving period after the end of a relationship in her bed. Calle ponders the logistical and other difficulties, and dispatches her bed across the Atlantic. Her correspondent reports the bed to be efficacious to his recovery.
'Couldn't capture death'. Video piece of an elderly woman, the artist's mother, peacefully and imperceptibly passing away. On the bed beside her, a small soft toy, a black and white cow with a caricaturally enlarged nose. When the blanket is rearranged the cow is carefully replaced beside her.
In the main room, 'Take care of yourself', the break-up e-mail she received and submitted to more than a hundred other women with various specialisms for interpretation. Outsourcing emotional analysis on an unprecedented scale.
My favourite was the video piece of the cockatoo who is given the e-mail on paper. It chews it, shreds it, finds no nutritional value and lets it fall to the floor. At one point it says something that is subtitled as: "I never lied to you".
For the most part the qualified jurists are in compliance with the spirit of the exercise twice over. They approach the text from the perspective of their discipline: from the expert on the 18th C: "He must surely have lived in the eighteenth century!"; a graphic designer folds a printout of the message into a bird shape; a graduate of the Ecole Normale submits the letter to close, dry, grinding analysis. Many also perform as would any other selection of acquaintances outside of the contexts of art and science: their responses supportive, with undertones of "Men, eh?".
Only one truly steps out of line, a late contribution to the potlatch, who has clearly seen what has gone before her: "The choir you have formed around this letter is the choir of death."
Elsewhere:
A man has written to her from California, asking to spend the grieving period after the end of a relationship in her bed. Calle ponders the logistical and other difficulties, and dispatches her bed across the Atlantic. Her correspondent reports the bed to be efficacious to his recovery.
'Couldn't capture death'. Video piece of an elderly woman, the artist's mother, peacefully and imperceptibly passing away. On the bed beside her, a small soft toy, a black and white cow with a caricaturally enlarged nose. When the blanket is rearranged the cow is carefully replaced beside her.
