"Are you being followed?"
Posters asking this question appeared around campus last week precluding the arrival of contemporary French artist Sophie Calle. For her work, which is most frequently a combination of photography and text, Calle has been known to follow people and try to gain a glimpse of their private lives.
Friday evening Calle led a gallery talk in the Hood Museum, which currently houses an exhibition of her work titled "Sophie Calle: Proofs." Earlier that afternoon, a reporter from The Dartmouth had the opportunity to talk with the artist, who spoke candidly about her work and her beginnings as an artist.
The Dartmouth: "Tell me about your background and how you began working in the arts."
Calle: "I'm French. I started in 1979 after travelling around the world for a few years, doing nothing in art. When I got back to Paris, I didn't know what to do with my life. I started to follow people out of curiosity about where they go and what they do. I took pleasure in this and I started to photograph it and write about it. To keep track of feelings. It started like that.
The Dartmouth: "Were you influenced by other artists?"
Calle: "No, because [my work] did not begin as art. It started more as the situation of me being lost in Paris and not knowing how to behave. It became art after."
The Dartmouth: "When did you begin to consider your work art?"
Calle: "Somebody considered it [to be art] for me when I did a piece where I photographed people sleeping in my bed. I did it as a game for myself, and somebody who slept in my bed spoke of me to someone who is an art critic. He called me to see it, and he thought it was a work of art."
The Dartmouth: "Did you believe him?"
Calle: "He didn't ask me to believe him; he asked me to show in a group show at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, and I did."
The Dartmouth: "What happened from there?"
Calle: "From there someone offered me another show. Things appeared by themselves. I never had to decide if my work was art."
The Dartmouth: "Is there something specific you are looking for in your work or about people?"
Calle: "I'm looking for nothing specific. I have ideas that come out of an attraction to something or one idea brings the other. I'm not trained to do sociological research. If I wait for somebody to come out of his hotel room in Venice for hours the idea of visiting his bedroom comes by itself."
The Dartmouth: "Do you ever think that you cross the line between invasion of privacy and art, or do you think that line even exists?"
Calle: "I don't wonder about it. To the eyes of some people what I do is intrusion, yes, why not. For me it is not a problem. For people to whom it is a problem, I let them discuss it."
"If I do anything in my work it is because I have decided I could do it. Some things I've never done because I thought I could not do them. It is my own personal choice of what I am allowing myself to do and what I am not.
The Dartmouth: "What things have you decided you couldn't do?"
Calle: "In some works I make fences deciding where I cannot go, for example, not using people's names. What I show I've decided I could show it. That doesn't mean I'm right; it just means it is what I've allowed myself to do without problem or guilt."
The Dartmouth: "Do you approach this differently when the work is about you as opposed to others?"
Calle: "I think I say more about me, at least I give my name."
The Datmouth: "Is it more difficult making works about yourself and using your name?"
Calle: "There is no rule. It can depend on a moment. What I would say about myself in '85, I would not have said in '83."
The Dartmouth: "What about the film 'Double Blind,' which you made with your husband Greg Shepard? Did it turn out differently than you expected?"
Calle: "I never expected a movie. It was a pretext to live with that man and have him follow me and have him stay to do the editing.
"I'm very happy with [the film] now. I got two things when I was only expecting one. I was expecting the presence of this man, and on top of it, I have a movie now."
The Dartmouth: "Will you work in film again?"
Calle: "I don't know. This came because [Greg] wanted to make a movie and the situation appeared to be good for a movie. I don't have the desire to make movies, in general, but tomorrow's situation might work better in a movie than in a text."
The Dartmouth: "It seems that the different ways in which people see things is a central issue in your work. Is this the case?"
Calle: "Everyone responds differently to something in terms of their own rationality, their own story. One person sees a painting that has green and blue and another sees somebody that looks like his wife. There is a poetry in this for me."
