Issue 7, Spring 2006
Edited by Maïté Snauwaert and Bertrand Gervais
Sophie Calle’s work has an important literary component, whose playful principle of constrained writing inscribes it in the line of Georges Perec and other Oulipians. The foundation of her work stems, however, from fine arts and the field of intermedial relations, evident in the important presence of the photographic in her art, the encirclement of places, the spatial disposition of people and objects as part of unusual installations, as well as in the use of videography. Intermediality also plays out through the range of intimate stories with multiple origins that Calle deploys and that highlight the interconnection between art and life in her work. Follower of the unknown, but also an artist who seeks attention, Sophie Calle requests to be followed, tracked, shadowed—from exhibition to media intervention, from art installation to book publication, from video to journalistic series. The texts in this issue criss-cross the artist’s multiple journeys; they are supplemented by a visual dossier that she was kind enough to create for this publication, taking up her work Twenty Year Later (2001) in a slightly different iteration and in a previously unpublished format.