Sophie Calle

French conceptual artist, Sophie Calle, best known for not only representing France at the Venice Biennale, but also following around strangers and taking pictures of their doings.  This year, Sophie Calle has made a film to accompany Walk it Back, a song from REM’s latest album Collapse Into Now featuring footage from her iPhone. AnOther sat down to talk with the artist.

Can you describe the view from your window?
My room’s window overlooks a prairie. In the prairie there are some bulls with oxpeckers on them. On the left, I can see the branches of a willow tree. Far away, a there is a row of Fraxinus and Tamarix. Sometimes I see an Aigrette, sometimes a white stork. Nothing special. However, somehow, the prairie is ‘glowing’.

What is particular about that view for you?
My eyes will never look at anything as long as I’ve been looking out that window. I’ve seen people, my parents, my cats, for sixteen years, but the window doesn’t move which means it is a frame. It’s like watching a painting for hours and hours. This prairie, framed by the window, is the picture my eyes would have photographed the most. The sight of my life.

So is it about a sense of time, place and space rather than the view itself?
There is an expression in architecture that Le Corbusier used that says l’espace indicible (ineffable space). For me the view is this kind of space. You can explain why such a monument is beautiful, because it is spectacular, because it is rare; you can speak of the beauty of certain things. But the idicible space is a space where there is mystery. There is nothing incredible. It is not a great architecture. It’s kind of banal. It is beautiful but you don’t know why, it’s just this matter of space and miracle of grace.

Read interview here.