Artist Research

 Sophie Calle

Another piece of work that really inspired this project is a piece called Gotham Handbook. This is a collaboration between Sophie Calle and Paul Auster. This piece began with Auster writing a novel called Leviathan, a character in the book being inspired by Calle and a few instances in her real life. After letting Auster use parts of her life for a fictional character Calle decided to switch the roles by requesting that Auster create a fictional character that she could replicate. In response to her request he created a series of rules for improving her life in New York city. The rules were smiling and talking to strangers, giving sandwiches and cigarettes to the homeless and cultivating a spot. The rules were in a sort of handbook or script style written under these categories as a way of becoming more present and active in her place rather than just the observer, I like the way she interpreted and documented the rules and her time following them. She took the rules completely literally and immersed herself in the experience making sandwiches and buying cigarettes to take out daily, completely taking over a phone booth as her own and smiling and talking to as many people as she could but still documented it in a kind of observant style, not just documenting memorable interactions and conversations with others but also documenting the very small details like the number of smiles given out each day.  

 I like the way she approached the task and her way of collecting the information. I feel that reading this work inspired the way I approached viewing things when I became leaf person, I mean the dissociation between myself and the character feels like its derived from a similar place as trying to replicate a fictional character. I also found inspiration in the way of documentation my experience like noting the number of leaves sewn and such.

- photographs of pages from the book Double game by Sophie Calle and Paul Auster