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uild an argument in order to demonstrate the sociological significance of Calle’s work by drawing on the
numerous themes that are often invoked in relation to it: the social games she engages in, the ethnographic
nature of her work, the blurring of various boundaries, the controversy and, of course, the texts and the
photographs. Using examples of both texts and photographs, I have compressed and made transparent each of
these themes under this new construction, which is, in itself, an example of lamination.
References / Notes
1 Christine Macel, ‘The Author Issue in the Work of Sophie Calle’ in M’AS-TU VUE? Did you see me? Sophie
Calle. (Munich, New York, Paris, London: Prestel, 2003). See also: Sophie Calle, ‘I asked for the moon and
I got it,’ The Guardian, Sunday 9 January (2011).
2 A versatile metaphor, lamination lends itself to each of these themes in physical, conceptual and visual
ways. Laminates are material goods, they have substance: I refer to books and articles as laminates.
Laminates are constructions, involving layering (just as narratives are constructions that involve layers
and layering). Lastly, the meanings created by (or between) the layers can be stubborn and lasting,
especially conceptually, and this point links to association and memory.
3 As Macel points out, The Sleepers was in fact Calle’s second project, coming after Suite Vénitienne, which
is wrongly dated as being produced in 1980. Macel writes: ‘in the case of Suite Vénitienne (1980), where
she shadowed a certain Henri B. from Paris to Venice, she had no option but to post-date the work as a
safeguard against being taken to court by him. The Suite is thus regarded as her second work, when in
fact it was her first, predating The Sleepers, produced in 1979, by a few months’ (2003, p. 25).
4 Sophie, Calle [1979], ‘The Sleepers’ in True Stories, Sophie Calle, The Helena Rubenstein Pavilion for
Contemporary Art: Tel Aviv Art Museum (1996), pp. 20-49; Sophie, Calle [1983] ‘The Address Book’ in
M’AS-TU VUE? Did you see me? (Munich, New York, Paris, London: Prestel, 2003); Sophie Calle [1979],
‘The Sleepers’ in M’AS-TU VUE? Did you see me?
5 Malene Vest Hansen, ‘Public Places-Private Spaces: Conceptualism, Feminism and Public Art: Notes on
Sophie Calle’s The Detachment.’ KONSTHISTORISK TIDSKRIFT, 1: 4 (2002), p. 199.
6 For example, when we enter a space in which another person is sleeping, the person might sense our
presence and will stir or move or perhaps even speak, emphasising the thin line that divides the states
of sleep and wakefulness. This kind of effect is hinted at by Freud, on dreaming, in his discussions of
‘external stimuli.’ See: Sigmund Freud [1913], The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. by A.A. Brill. (London:
George Allen & Unwin, 1948), p. 217. He also notes that ‘actual sensations experienced during sleep
may constitute part of the dream-material.’ (p. 314)
7 The element of trust is emphasised best in the case of ‘the fourteenth sleeper’ in Calle’s game, the girl
from the baby-sitting agency, ‘Kid Service,’ for whom Calle had paid ‘54.50 francs’ for three hours (Calle,
1996, p. 36). Calle writes: ‘She introduces herself. I ask her to sleep for me. She’s worried. She fears I’m a
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