tomorrow i'm giving a co-presentation on one of my favorite artist-authors, Sophie Calle. such a beautiful book...the one i like so much that i'm posting a picture:


for the presentation, my co-presenter, lt, and i have been interviewing people who have met Sophie Calle - the last one was quite the coup. I'm going to put them here:

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Friend of Sophie’s

When and where did you first meet Sophie Calle? Could you describe the moment?

1979. It was hard to say anything about her at first. She was a little mousy, brown hair, thin, frail and long nosed. She didn’t have the renown she has now, and even if- I doubt I would have recognized her. Nothing differentiated her from the crowd of young New York girls I saw weave through galleries at the time. Nothing about her spoke great artist, or even, as I admit- the French girl I imagined.

In which details did you fall in love with her?

Really it wasn’t till she said she was from Paris that I started to pay any attention. I was a silly American college student, and there was all this noise about things going on in Paris. I wanted to leave the US- I have never been out of the country, and Paris seemed more charged with answering issues I was interested in, but because of all this I was shy and the only thing I said was something I remembered from French class, which was what I hoped was J’se coule compengee d’ soui toi domer but I must have confused a syllable or two when I said it, because she said to me then that she hasn’t any (to this day I don’t know what she meant or what I had mispronounced that prompted this). But then she said that she could draw it for me on a sheet of paper to take with, since no person should go on without it. So anyways, she gave me a little scribble of parl de conede, and that’s how I met her. I guess you could say she was always very down to earth.

*

Docent for her Paris Exhibition

When and where did you first meet Sophie Calle? Could you describe the moment?

It was towards the beginning of her Paris Exhibition, I think the third week in December. During those first few months she came every day and watched people look at her work. I didn’t know who she was. I was new, and still trying figure out where I was. One day, I went to the drinking fountain (near one of her unfinished films), and when I was done, I turned around and she took a picture of me. I told her flashes weren’t allowed in the exhibit. Then she asked me if I would talk to her after she finished drinking some water.

In which details did you fall in love with her?

I don’t know if you know this, but at a fountain, she lets the water hit her chin. I saw that then—chin first, then mouth. She doesn’t open her mouth very wide. She doesn’t suck the stream either. She just lets it land in behind her lips, right in between her tongue and bottom teeth. When she asked me questions, she was very flat. But demanding. I can appreciate that.

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Fan of Sophie Calle who has spent some time stalking her

When and where did you first meet Sophie Calle? Could you describe the moment?

Do you mean in person? If you mean in person, it took some time. The first time I really met her though was through Les Aveugles. When I saw those pictures, I felt I knew her. I was very annoyed when other people started knowing her too. Do you understand what I mean? How it is very disappointing, as if something has been taken away from you, when someone you believe in who needs that belief because nobody else is there to supply it, suddenly becomes well-known and everyone takes away from the act only you had previously provided. Before, I had admired her quietly, but when that started to mean so little, I went and met her personally. I tracked her down in 2004, just before M’as – tu vue closed. She tried at first to step around me, but when she noticed my motive, she stopped and wiped her hand across her forehead.

In which details did you fall in love with her?

It was the eyes. Her eyes, their eyes, her eyes through their eyes, her eyes through yours. You can see many people wrapped together sometimes, clustered and hiding until dilation.

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Art Critic

When and where did you first meet Sophie Calle? Could you describe the moment?

Oh, I suppose I met her in one of those funny little café’s everyone is gathering at. In Paris, a few years ago, perhaps more. I had been sitting by myself, enjoying a cigarette or two, drifting, and suddenly she ran over to me. I distinctly remember wondering if she would hit. I have no idea how she discovered who I was; maybe I was pointed out by an acquaintance. But she hovered over me and explained—in English, for which I was grateful, recently having had to suffer a slew of monstrous mistranslations—how she was very angry with me because I had published a recent article she loved and it didn’t mention her once. She told me, and I remember her words, that I had made a very horrible mistake.

In which details did you fall in love with her?

Falling in love is one of those things. You are inside it and despise it simultaneously. She was one of those, so I will say, it might have been the genuine nature of her ridiculous fury. The red splotches on her neck just where her blouse fell away.

*

Sophie Calle

When and where did you first meet Sophie Calle? Could you describe the moment?

Thursday 1978, North of San Francisco in Bolinas. I took a walk with a small dog. At a curb in the graveyard I was uncertain when I looked down. But I took the picture. We did not exchange words. No, that’s not true—I read a grocery receipt floating around. Seeing the photograph later, I was quite certain. I flew back to Paris the next month. On the plane, the stewardess asked me where I was from, and I thought of meeting Sophie.

In which details did you fall in love with her?

This is not such an easy question, is it? * There were the times she was not there, and that might be one such detail. It allows something. * She walked once on a river. At the end, she saw these little pieces of paper tied to a tree. They were closed up, curled, and there was a kind of watching to them. She went down and without looking at the others, took one paper off the tree. This paper, she decided, would be her next project. It never happened, and I can’t remember what was on the paper. * In the evenings I drink coffee. It makes it hard to sleep but one doesn’t always need to sleep. Coffee gives bad dreams anyways. * She wrote me a postcard once, but forgot to get the right stamp. They held it at the post office, and I went down and paid for the extra postage. On the back it said “I never saw the peace dove as a threat.” * Once I saw her looking.