Two examples of relay in
contemporary photography are ‘Take Care
of Yourself’ by Sophie Calle and ‘Objects
in the Field’ by Sophie Ricketts; both pieces are created collaboratively.
Sophie Calle’s creation came about
in 2007 after receiving a ‘Dear John’ type email from her partner.
‘I received an email telling me it was
over.
I didn't know how to respond.
It was almost as if it hadn't been meant
for me.
It ended with the words, "Take care
of yourself."
And so I did.
I asked 107 women (including two made
from wood and one with feathers),
chosen for their profession or skills,
to interpret this letter.
To analyze it, comment on it, dance it,
sing it.
Dissect it. Exhaust it.
Understand it for me.
Answer for me.
It was a way of taking the time to break
up.
A
way of taking care of myself.’
The second of Calle’s pieces
about a partner, ‘Take Care of Yourself’ thrust her relationship into the
public domain. Although her ex partner, who remains unknown didn’t like the
idea, he respected her work and didn’t object. One of Calle’s main worries when
creating the piece was that it would be seen as a revenge piece; this was not
her aim, my belief is that it was more about personal healing.
In response to the dumping,
Calle sent the email to 107 women over the course of two years, requesting that
they examine the letter based on their profession. Responses came in forms from
crosswords to dance, paintings to psychoanalytical assessments; Calle recorded
performances on video and photographs of participants were placed alongside
written pieces.
Shortly after receiving the
email, Calle showed a close friend, asking her how to reply. Within days she
had decided to develop the broader investigation, not initially realising its
cathartic value:
"After I month I felt better. There was no suffering. It worked.
The project had replaced the man."
The process had saved her from
the inevitable weeks of reading and analysing the email herself. When asked if
she is bothered about her personal life aired for all to see, she replies by
pointing out that most poetry reflects the author’s personal lives and
feelings. In Calle’s opinion, she and the man are not the subject of this
piece, the email is the subject. In her defence, she states that the email told
her to take care of herself; her partner knew her history and methods of doing
just this.
Calle’s method of healing
through her work comes full circle as she uses errors in critiques of her work
to then create more. Hunting down inaccuracies in the text, she enacts the work
as mistakenly described by the journalist, creating art rather than suffering.
I also get the feeling that Calle’s art aides to distance her from reality as
she, the characters she encounters and their personal situations begin to feel
almost fictional. This removal from reality may or may not be healthy but it
seems to work for her.
Sophie Rickett’s ‘Objects in the
Field’ is a collaborative piece, created alongside astronomer Dr Roderick
Willstrop. As well as building a camera telescope, the Three Mirror Telescope
in 1991, more than thirty years earlier Willstrop created images showing optical
pulses from the Crab pulsar.
The piece appears very different
to Calle’s work in its scientific nature, however their work ethic has
similarities. Rickett discusses the act of combining something she knows with
something which is completely unfamiliar and allowing them to slowly come
together, finding the right balance between conceptual understanding and
allowing some free-fall. Rickett also exposes snippets of herself in the
project as she connects the optics and her time spent at the institute with
memories of her childhood.
Although scientific and open to
anyone with an interest in the field, the content of the project is very
personal to and close to the heart of Dr Roderick Willstrop. Not unlike some of
Calle’s work, this project tests the limits of collaboration as the boundaries
between science and art are blurred. The project also shows just how
impermanent meaning and interpretation can be as she reedits and redefines
Willstrop’s images.
How do these pieces of work reflect
postmodern approaches to narrative?
Both examples of relay, these
pieces show a postmodern approach to narrative as untraditional approaches come
into play. Rickett’s authorship is shared with Willstrop due to the images
being originally captured by the astronomer. The collaboration is acknowledged
as Willstrop provides the captions for the reedited images and reads her text
on the video.
Calle’s work is almost completely
given over to others as 107 women collaborate to realise her vision. This story
has a beginning, yet I feel that the only end is Calle’s ability to move on,
relatively unscarred from the relationship. Calle’s invitation to 107 women to
interpret the email essentially invites the viewer to consider their own
interpretation, to evaluate it in their own way.
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