In search of Sophie Calle, Vito Acconci and Christopher Nolan

Films such as Following by Christopher Nolan (whose 2006 film The Prestige is out now in Europe) and artworks such as Sophie Calle’s and Vito Acconci’s are about following perfect strangers for the kick of it. The art of stalking comes to mind.

The comparison of Calle with Acconci is inevitable:

The cultural and social question of who is using whom is always at issue in artwork that gives others a voice (Krzysztof Wodiczko’s enlistment of people with stories of cultural dislocation is one relevant example) or relies on their presence in some other way (the inevitable comparison, to Calle’s early work in particular, is Vito Acconci’s 1969 Following Piece) —Art in America, Sept, 2005 by Nancy Princenthal

For a picture of the Following Piece click here.

On Sophie Calle’s Address Book (1983):

One of Calle’s first projects to generate public controversy was Address Book (1983). The French daily newspaper Libération invited her to publish a series of 28 articles. Having recently found an address book on the street (which she photocopied and returned to its owner), she decided to call some of the telephone numbers in the book and speak with the people about its owner. To the transcripts of these conversations, Calle added photographs of the man’s favorite activities, creating a portrait of a man she never met, by way of his acquaintances. The articles were published, but upon discovering them, the owner of the address book, a documentary filmmaker named Pierre Baudry, threatened to sue the artist for invasion of privacy. As Calle reports, the owner discovered a nude photograph of her, and demanded the newspaper publish it, in retaliation for what he perceived to be an unwelcome intrusion into his private life.

On Following:

Following (1998) – Christopher Nolan
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Bill is a young, jobless aspiring writer. He tells a story about himself to a man, explaining how he began to follow random people on the street in an attempt to understand them. He sets up a number of rules to separate himself from the people he follows, but breaks them when he begins following a specific man, Cobb, day after day. Cobb wears a suit and leaves several different apartment buildings carrying a bag. He eventually confronts Bill at a diner and reveals that he is a burglar. Cobb invites Bill to accompany him on his next burglary.

On Following piece (1969) – Vito Acconci:

Following Piece is one of Vito Acconci’s early works. The underlying idea was to select a person from the passers-by who were by chance walking by and to follow the person until he or she disappeared into a private place where Acconci could not enter. The act of following could last a few minutes, if the person then got into a car, or four or five hours, if the person went to a cinema or restaurant. Acconci carried out this performance everyday for a month. And he typed up an account of each ‘pursuit’, sending it each time to a different member of the art community. —http://hosting.zkm.de/ctrlspace/d/texts/01?print-friendly=true [Mar 2005]