The Sleepers (les Dormeurs)

Sophie Calle, 1979 · Gallery 419 · Floor 4

Sophie Calle doesn't know what to do with her day. So, she follows somebody who's already having one. Think about that for a second. She's back in Paris after seven years away. No job. No friends left. She picks a stranger in the street and goes wherever they go. Takes photographs. Writes things down. They have somewhere to be. Now she does too. She isn't calling this art yet. It's just something to do. Then a friend who's been working all night asks if she can sleep in Calle's bed. You know, a reasonable request. But Calle takes it quite a bit further. She thinks it would be fun to have somebody in the bed all the time. One person gets up, another gets in. Eight-hour shifts. Keep it going for eight days. So she starts asking people. Friends. Strangers. Bakers, who sleep during the day anyway. A babysitter from an agency. Imagine getting that booking. This is The Sleepers. Paris, 1979. She feeds them, photographs them every hour, writes down what happens. There's a tape recorder. And a questionnaire. She says she's afraid of having strangers in her bed. Also afraid of the silence. She's invited them. She's set the hours. Now she needs help getting through the conversation. One visitor even falls asleep during the questions. When somebody doesn't turn up, her mother fills in. Shows up at noon. Asks for a whiskey. Goes to sleep. At four-thirty, Calle wakes her with champagne. Guess you could say her mother is having a fairly good shift. One of the women she asks at the market happens to be married to an art critic. She goes home and tells him what she's been doing. He asks to see the pictures. The project ends up in an exhibition. That's how Calle says she became an artist. First, though, the critic asks her something. Is this art? She says it could be.

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