Exquisite Pain

Sophie Calle is who I turn to when I have had my heart broken.

'The woman narrates repeatedly the story of a break up; the suffering at the end of an affair.  Each time she remembers it differently, adding and subtracting details, finding new ways to both remember and forget what happened. In contrast to this obsessive repetition the man tells many different stories collected from the lives of other people; each story a snapshot narrative of sorrow, big or small, that takes its place in a growing catalogue of suffering, break-ups, humiliations, deaths, illnesses and love letters that never arrive.'

'In Suite Vénitienne, Calle secretly follows a man through Venice while taking notes and photographing him;  in L’hôtel, Calle disguises herself as a maid and examines strangers’ lives through their belongings left in hotel rooms during their absence. As these two works unfold, the viewers’ expectations about the work as representing anything “real” are overturned, and the viewer becomes more interested in Sophie Calle than in any secrets she might reveal about the others.'

            'Calle begins these performances by setting up rules for her game of detective, most obvious of which is, —try not to be seen. She is never able to follow through with this one-sided relationship, however, and her rules are made to be broken. Her voyeuristic activity forces a kind of one-sided intimacy with her subjects (especially men) through the visual, which always has the possibility of reversal and, in the end, results in the construction of “Sophie.”  She writes about how her project of observing others effects her emotions and controls her actions, in other words, how she becomes dependent on her subjects. The possibility that she will be caught or confronted is the possibility of establishing a real relationship, while at the same time she reminds us cleverly that it is just a game.'