Sins of commission

‘They order, said I, this matter better in France.’ It is the norm at the national pavilions (a record 76 nations are present this year) for a new commissioner to be appointed for each edition, who selects the artist, or artists, to represent their country, or heads a committee that does so. A dozen years ago, France reversed this process, selecting the artist first, who then named their own commissioner.

Sophie Calle, this year’s French artist, found hers by advertising in Libération (the Gallic Guardian). Her extensive floor-to-ceiling installation of texts, photographs and videos was triggered by an email from her lover announcing he was dumping her, which ended ‘Prenez soin de vous’ (Take care of yourself), now the title of the show. Her response, caveat scriptor, was to fire off copies of the offending email to 107 women, ranging from a philosopher, actress, classicist, etiquette consultant, psychoanalyst and headhunter to an Indian dancer, a UN expert on women’s rights, a clairvoyant, a markswoman, a chess player and a secret-service agent, all of whom brought their professional expertise to bear on it.

The markswoman used it for target practice, the classicist translated it into Latin with a commentary, the dancer re-enacted it in dance, the spook put it into cypher, the headhunter assessed the job potential of the author, and so on. One of the shortest replies was from her sexologist, who turned down Calle’s request for antidepressants with a brisk: ‘You are simply sad. A distressing event is bound to hurt, but the appropriate solution is not a chemical one.’ One of the longest was from the philosopher, who recommended Kierkegaard, ‘readily available in paperback’. Meanwhile the letter was being turned into shorthand, Morse code, Braille, bar codes and text messages — all of which in blown-up form adorn the walls of the pavilion, with colour photos of many of the respondents and films of them studying and interpreting the text (the videoed rendering into sign language being especially gripping).