Saturday, October 13, 2018, I visited the New York Public Library’s Prints and Photographs Study Room to view edition 76/250 of Sophie Calle’s The Bronx, which is part of the library’s Spencer Collection. In 2002, Item Editions published a bilingual facsimile edition of the work in 250 copies.
In 1980,The Bronx was first exhibited at the South Bronx based alternative arts space, Fashion MODA, located at 2803 Third Avenue by “the Hub.” The work, which was initially titled Waiting for People to Come to Fashion MODA and Asking them to Take me Wherever They Want in the South Bronx, was part of a city-wide group exhibition, “Une Idée en L’Air.” Other participating galleries besides Fashion MODA included Artists Space, Franklin Furnace, and Creative Time, among others. While The Bronx was not Calle’s first major work, it was her first public exhibition. Since then, it has reappeared most recently at the Bronx Museum of the Arts; luckily, anyone with a New York Public Library library card and an appointment is welcome to view the Spencer Collection’s edition.
Fashion MODA with mural by Crash (1980)
According to Calle, the work was inspired by “a simple idea: playing with the fear created by that neighbourhood [the South Bronx] and the ghetto aspect.” [1] Calle’s conceptual parameters were fairly simple; the artist invited random passers-by who she met at Fashion MODA to take her anywhere they wanted—typically a place of private, personal significance, or beauty, like the Botanical Garden—“a place that they’d never forget about.” [2] Calle then documented the experience through a combination of text, photograph, and interview. In some ways, I am reminded of the early works of Adrian Piper, particularly Context #7, a work I’d seen once at the Walker Art Center a few years ago. Both Calle and Piper use minimalist language and ideas to spell out for the viewer the terms of engagement that result in the work.
Sophie Calle, The Bronx, 1980.
Beyond playing with fear, it is unclear what Calle’s initial ambitions might have been. Upon reading and viewing Calle’s later works, like The Address Book and Exquisite Pain, for example, one discerns a similar method and set of interests inform The Bronx. As in Calle’s other projects, The Bronx is a record documenting the artist’s chance encounters; in electing to make a work in the Bronx about the Bronx, Calle deferred to the desires, narratives, experiences, and intuitions of Bronx denizens as the raw materials for the work. [3] I wouldn’t go so far, however, as to describe these subjects who double as participants, collaborators. Nevertheless, in order to carry out the desire to involve others in the production of a work, I imagine Calle had to relinquish some degree of control over some not inconsequential variables, like: What if no one shows up? And you are met with hostility? And who the fuck are you, the artist, to start asking questions, anyway? Or, what if, in trusting someone unknown to lead you astray, you are led to to a dangerous place? Calle’s optimism, maybe attributable to a belief in “the process,” yields final works, particularly prose, which are sharp, distilled, and, what I suspect particular to Calle’s brand of conceptualism, always suggestive of something else, often intangible—the lived experience of making the work, that secret known only by the artist and her subjects.
Sophie Calle, The Bronx, 1980.
And yet all the general details are there. As Calle relates in the text: On Thursday, November 6, everyday, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., for an undetermined number of days, Calle went to Fashion MODA. Throughout her stay, until November 14, eight people participated.
Sophie Calle, The Bronx, 1980.
But the work was not yet complete: “The day before the opening I hung the photos and the texts on the wall. That night, an unexpected and providential collaborator broke into the gallery and covered every possible surface with graffiti.” Looking back on the work, Calle concludes the final result was “much better.” [4] But in the February 1981 issue of Artforum, the reviewer of the exhibition was less impressed, glibly observing: “Sophie Calle’s obsessive and idiosyncratic recording of the behavior of strangers looked as though it might develop into something if she can transcend the whimsical narratives which currently hobble the work.” Grumpy and condescending.
Sophie Calle, The Bronx, 1980. Installation view at Fashion MODA.
In revisiting The Bronx, I was able to better appreciate Calle’s influence on contemporary art and writing cultures, which can be seen in more works by writers and artists like Claudia Rankine, most notably in Citizen, or Chloë Bass in A Glossary of Proximity Verbs.
Chloë Bass. A Glossary of Proximity Verbs, 2018. Installation view, A Recollection, Predicated, The Kitchen, January 19–February 10, 2018. Photo: Naima Green.
Chloë Bass. A Glossary of Proximity Verbs (detail), 2018.
I hope readers and writers of contemporary poetry and the lyric essay consider revisiting Calle’s work as one which takes place at an interesting and novel juncture between lyric, experimental, and conceptual writing traditions. [5] I wonder by what accident the Bronx has become an undertheorized epicenter for similar traditions.
__________
[1] Christine Macel, “Biographical interview with Sophie Calle” in Sophie Calle: M’as-tuvue? (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2003), p.80.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Also see Calle’s lesser known, site-specific work, Los Angeles: “On July 14, 1984 I was invited to do a show in Los Angeles. I had fifteen days during the Olympic Games, to create a piece related to the city. I decided to ask people a single question: ‘Since Los Angeles is literally the city of angels, where are the angels?,’” Sophie Calle, Los Angeles (Paris: Item éditions, 2002). Unlike The Bronx, the participants in Los Angeles included established figures such as Frank Gehry, Richard O’Neill, and Larry Gross.
[4] Macel, “Biographical interview with Sophie Calle,” p.80.
[5] See, for example, http://jacketmagazine.com/28/berkson-q.html