Sophie Calle: The Sleepers

蘇菲．卡爾 1979 年的代表性作品《The Sleepers》首次推出英文版。
在蘇菲．卡爾最早的藝術實驗之一中，她邀請朋友、熟人與陌生人來到她的床上睡覺。共有 27 人同意參與，其中包括一名麵包師、一位保姆、一位演員、一名記者、一位裁縫、一名小號手，以及三位畫家。

卡爾為他們拍攝清醒與熟睡時的照片，並在房門關上後悄悄錄下他們的私密談話。她為每位參與者準備餐點，並在對方同意的情況下進行問卷訪談，詢問他們的習慣、偏好與夢境，以及他們如何理解「睡在她的床上」這件事——是出於好奇？是一場遊戲？是一件藝術作品？還是，如卡爾所設定的那樣，是一份「工作」。

這項計畫最終成為她 1979 年的首場展覽：由 198 張照片與簡短文字構成的網格式裝置。

不同於當年的展覽形式，這本藝術家書版《The Sleepers》不僅完整收錄所有照片與說明文字，還加入了卡爾引人入勝、宛如中篇小說般的敘事——這段文字此前從未被翻譯出版。以她的臥室這一個曖昧而過渡的場景為舞台，卡爾透過文字與照片記錄參與者的到來、交談、入睡、用餐與離開，彷彿在即時報導一場持續八天的夢境。

在這件作品中，已可見卡爾日後創作的重要線索：她精密而越界的調查方式、在親密與距離之間的微妙拿捏，以及對他人生活無止境的好奇。當她觀察這些睡者時，他們也同樣觀察著她，彼此以坦率相對。

Calle’s seminal 1979 series of people sleeping in her bed: now in English

In one of Sophie Calle’s first artistic experiments, she invited friends, acquaintances and strangers to sleep in her bed. Twenty-seven people agreed, among them a baker, a babysitter, an actor, a journalist, a seamstress, a trumpet player and three painters. Calle photographed them awake and asleep, secretly recording any private conversations once the door closed. She served each a meal, and, if they agreed, she subjected them to a questionnaire that probed their personal predilections, habits and dreams as well as their interpretations of the act of sleeping in her bed: a curiosity, a game, an artwork, or―as Calle intended it―a job. The result, comprising her first exhibition in 1979, was a grid of 198 photographs and short texts.
Unlike the original installation, this artist’s book version of The Sleepers contains not only all the photographs and captions but also her engrossing, novellalike narrative, untranslated until now. From the single, liminal mise-en-scène of her bedroom, Calle reports in text and photos, as if in real time, as sleepers arrive, talk, sleep, eat and leave. Their acute and sometimes startling, sometimes endearing particularities merge into something almost like an eight-day-long dream. Many seeds of Calle’s subsequent works are embedded in The Sleepers: her exacting and transgressive methods of investigation, her cultivation of intimacy and remove, and her unrelenting curiosity. In this work, as she observes the sleepers, they observe her too―with reciprocal candor. The Sleepers, clothbound and pillow-like, unfolds as it opens, inviting the reader to join the others in Calle’s bed.