Sophie Calle
Title unknown
From Take Care of Yourself, 2007 installation. Curated by Daniel Buren, French Pavilion, 52nd International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 2007.
“In 2004, or thereabouts, Calle, France’s best-known conceptual artist, received a break-up letter via email. What followed was an epic and very public act of revenge: a text/photo/video installation called Take Care of Yourself (2004-07), named for letter’s sign-off line. The author is identified only as X. Whether her ex-lover marked it that way or whether Calle did so to protect his identity is unknown. Either way, it’s an apt indicator of the evisceration he receives at the hands of Calle and her collaborators.
For the piece, which debuted in the French Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale, she asked 107 women to respond to the letter. Their collective reaction, laid out in text panels, a cartoon, a bar chart, a loopy diagram that in another context could serve as a guide to sunken treasure, and a great many still photos and videos (including one of a screeching parrot, who, when served the letter, shreds and eats it), forms the centerpiece of Missing…A parrot presented with X’s letter shreds and eats it. Video. At a glance, Take Care of Yourself seems to fit the mold since it contains reams of text. Wade into it and you quickly become engrossed. The pull comes, in large measure, from the letter itself, which you’re encourage to read before entering the exhibit. Larded with false contrition, blame shifting, delusional thinking, weasel words, veiled (and overt) narcissism and a lot of very strained syntax, it lowers expectations for what might be made of it. Calle’s army of analysts upends those expectations. They transform X’s beg-off into a literary event, a firing squad of triangulating voices that together, demonstrate the degree to which words really do matter. What amazes is the sheer variety of approaches taken by those who take X to task. If you walk in, thinking as I did, that you’ll be nonplussed by so much linguistic dissection, be prepared to have your head spun. A criminal psychologist writes: “He is an authentic manipulator, perverse, psychologically dangerous and/or a great writer.” A psychic, after consulting the tarot, concludes: “What is hidden in this letter is worse than what it says. It is the letter of a man who is desperate and threatened….” A judge, citing sections of the penal code, opines: “The letter you received offers a reasonable chance at seeing X condemned by the court both for fraud and for deceit…” Another legal-minded writer frames X’s missive as “the negotiation and performance of a banal lease.” A commentator whose profession I failed to note appraises X’s wish “for things to have turned out differently” as follows: “Yes of course: Blame it on Mom, the Priest, the President, Madonna, his reading of Don Juan, the riots in the suburbs and who knows what else.” About X’s mangled syntax, a Latinist says: “The gentleman has got himself rather tied up in the play of negations.” They are, she determines with palpable exasperation, “absurd and impossible to render.” A police captain chalks up X’s behavior to demographic advantage: Paris has more men than women, so the men do as they please. This multi-pronged deconstruction would be stupefying were it presented solely as text. Calle sidesteps that pitfall. She frames each text differently and pairs it with an environmental portrait of the author, interspersing forensic touches, like diagrams that chart repeated phrases and the number of words in each sentence of X’s email missive.”—David M. Roth
Little Bristling Soul 