Mobile objects in Sophie Calle's Fantômes and Prenez soin de vous

In: French cultural studies, Band 29, Heft 1, S. 70-78

Abstract

The mobility of people and objects is a central motif in the work of contemporary artist Sophie Calle. In this article, I compare two of Calle's exhibitions that take a particularly unusual approach to mobility. In Fantômes and Prenez soin de vous, the objects are an email and works of art and their mobility arises from their displacement. In both exhibitions, Calle obliges the spectator to look at other people looking at the artefacts, which I refer to as the 'double look'. In this article, I analyse how this technique serves to question the notion of a unitary, individual artist behind each work of art, how it questions the parameters of spectatorship, and how it challenges understandings of intimacy in contemporary culture.