Fiktionen mit Fantômas

You exist only in the trace of the other...

Sophie Calle: Double Game. London: Violette Edition 2007.

Von Bellis Schneewein

A strange arrogance compels us not only to possess the other, but also to penetrate his secret, not only to be desired by him, but to be fatal to him, too.
The sensuality of behind-the-scenes power: the art of making the other disappear.
That requires an entire ritual. [1]

Rituals offer a possibility to confront life under a specific setting. „I do not want to discover what life is", Sophie Calle says. „I discover certain order and disorder. Maybe rituals mediate a certain order to me. They are not tools to make my personal life easier, – at most they enrich the process of creation."

Sophie Calle tells stories. Her exhibitions contain a lot of reading matter. She arranges objects, photos and texts to installations and books, to report her experiences and actions. All these operations have the same importance for her. She surrenders to a personal investigation of identity and the social components connected to it, and she is famous for her sleuth-like explorations of human relationships.This led her, for example, to follow a stranger in the streets of Venice and document his every move; or to find work as a hotel chambermaid in order to photograph the belongings of the hotel’s guests. In her different projects, she often plays roles or adopts guises. She recasts her own identity to reconstruct or document strangers’ lives, examining the relationship between the artist and the objects of her investigations.
Paul Auster (born 1947) is a Brooklyn-based author. In his Novel „Leviathan" he used some episodes of Sophie Calle's life to create a character called Maria. Intrigued by this fictionalization, Sophie Calle asked Auster to be the author of her actions for a period of up to one year. Paul Auster objected. He did not want to take the responsibility for that. He sent her „Personal Instruction for SC on How to improve live in New York City (because she asked)" instead. This also happens to be the last chapter of „Double Game". In the beginning of the book, Sophie Calle introduces „the rules of the game" and thereby determins the book's structure: I. „The Life of Maria and how it influenced the life of Sophie Calle" II. „The life of Sophie Calle and how it influenced the life of Maria" III. „One of many ways to mingle fact with fiction. The Gotham Project."

Enticing show of the concrete

Sophie Calle continues to set out her actions simple and clearly as usual. The pages  of Paul Auster's Leviathan, where Maria is introduced, are shown as copies in the book. The sections are marked by hand writing and corrected in relation to her biography or commented upon. (like „too much imagination", „exessive", excessive again"). Sophie Calle takes some descriptions of Maria's life and acts them out, – „to get closer to that fictional character", as she says. Among them, for instance, a chromatic diet: Maria restricts herself in a diet where she would eat food in only one color. Sometimes, she would also spend days dedicated to letters of the alphabet. In the second part, Sophie Calle traces and presents the actions Paul Auster had taken from her life to create Maria. „Suite vénitienne", „The detective", „The Hotel". Part Three is the Gotham Project. The response of Paul Auster to Calle's invitation in the shape of a letter, as well as his instructions in the „Gotham Handbook" are shown. The personal instructions are like: Smile and talk to strangers. Take sandwiches with you and give them to the beggars and homeless people. Cultivate a spot in the city.

„Double game" continues to be a documentation of these processes with text and photos. It is a fine compilation of different works by Sophie Calle and her approaches. Again, she reflects her experiences through different media: Text, photos, and a book. The „cultivated spot in the city" transformed a telephone booth into a piece of art. Each of these works stand by itself, yet echoes the presence of the other.
Paul Auster's writings, in which characters follow secrets, rituals and possessions, and which often reflect upon him as an author, connect very well to Sophie Calle's actions. Identity, the absence of it, or shifts of identity are a major theme in his prose. In his poems though, he passionately and constantly investigates the necessity of language, of speech, and its inadequacy. It may be because of this that his words and stories seem to be haunted by a mysterious silence and demand a certain attention and physicality. Sophie Calle for her part through her enactment reaches exactly into that secretiveness and brings it into our daily existence. Both authors extend special thanks to each other for the permission to mingle fact with fiction in their books. The use of language in „Double Game" is quite factual, describing the run of events. The photos are clear arrangements or snapshots. Sophie Calle witnesses, documents, and formulates delicate details. The contrast between the rather pragmatic representation of text and photos and the personal desires she negotiates evokes a remarkable sensuality. This time, her actions are framed by real fiction rather than driven by personal desire – which adds a different charm. Or was it the other way around?

Sophie Calle (born 1953) is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist working in Paris and New York. Calle’s work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. During the 52nd Venice Biennale, she exhibited „Take care of yourself" in the French Pavilion.
(25. 10. 2007)

[1] Jean Baudrillard and Sophie Calle. Please Follow Me. Suite vénitienne. Seattle: Bay Press 1988.

Encore Fantômas

Thomas Brandlmeier: Fantômas. Beiträge zur Panik des 20.Jahrhundert, Frankfurth a.M.: Verbrecher Verlag 2007.

Von Sabina Holzer mit Fotos aus einer Serie von Jack Hauser

„Fantômas gehört zur Mythologie des 20. Jahrhunderts", so Thomas Brandlmeier. „Er ist eine Figur, die so gut zur Panik des 20.Jahrhunderts passt, dass sie -wie man so schön sagt- erfunden werden musste. Fantômas als schwarzer Mann, der alle Ängste der Bürger zusammen fasst, besitzt aber auch eine Faszination, die ganz diffus ist: von der schwarzen Fahne der Anarchisten bis zum schwarzen Hemd der Faschisten.Teil dieser Faszination liegt in dem Vorschein einer radikal anderen Sichtweise auf die kapitalistische Wirklichkeit." Angeregt durch eine Feuillade-Retrospektive 1981 in München, folgt Brandlmeier, den Spuren von Fantômas entlang sämtlicher Avantgarden des 20. Jahrhunderts.
Die Romane (1911-1913) von Pierre Souvestre und Marcel Allain, dienten als Drehbuchvorlage für Feuillade's gleichnamigen Cinéroman. Auch Musidora, die als Irma Vep einen weiblichen Fantômas verkörpert und in ihrem maillot noir, als ein blue print für sämtliche Femmes Fatales des Jahrhunderts fungiert, hat sich ebenfalls aus einer Filmserie (Les Vampires, 1915) von Feuillade entwickelt. Brandlmeier zeigt, wie aus einer Quelle der Trivialkultur eine neue Ikonografie erwächst. Er bezeichnet das Phänomen Fantômas als eine Art kulturgeschichtlichen Knoten, dessen fantastisches und kriminelles Treiben Film, Literatur und bildende Kunst inspiriert. André Breton, Apollinare, Louis Aragon, Max Jacob, Colette, René Magritte, Luis Buñuel, Godard, Susan Sontag, Jonathan Meese, Mike Patton u.v.a.  - Poesie, Malerei, Comix, Sound und Rockarien, Film  - Europa, Lateinamerika und Walt Disney, überall hinterlässt Fantômas in einer Ästhetik des Absurden und Unschönen als ungezähmter, poetischer Körper seine Spuren.

Und er sagt: „Wer beweist uns, dass der Fantômas von gestern der von morgen sein wird? Und dass der Fantômas von heute nicht ein anderer Fantômas ist?"

„Weil aber der Kunst ihre Utopie, das noch nicht Seiende, schwarz verhängt ist, bleibt sie durch all ihre Vermittlungen hindurch Erinnerung, die an das Mögliche gegen das Wirkliche, das jenes verdrängte, etwas wie die imaginäre Wiedergutmachung der Katastrophe Weltgeschichte, Freiheit, die im Banne der Necessität nicht geworden, und von der ungewiss ist, ob sie wird. In ihrer Spannung zur permanenten Katastrophe ist die Negativität der Kunst, ihre Methexis am Finsteren mitgesetzt. (Theodor W. Adorno: Ästhetische Theorie. Frankfurt/Main 1970. S.204)     Double Game      Fantômas      Literatur   LITERATUR Acker, Kathy: Literal Madness. 3 Novels. Kathy goes to Haiti. My Death, my Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Florida, New York: Groove Press 1988. Barthes, Roland: Fragmente einer Sprache der Liebe. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 2004 (10.Auflage). Benjamin, Walter: Aura und Reflexion. Schriften zur Kunsttheorie und Ästhetik. Ausgewählt und mit einem Nachwort von Hartmut Böhme und Yvonne Ehrenspeck, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 2007. Berger, John: Hold Everything Dear. Dispatches on Survival and Resistance, London: Verso 2007. Blissett, Luther: Q. München: Piper Verlag 2003 (3.Auflage). Borges, Jorge L. : Fiktionen. Erzählungen 1939 -1944, Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer TB 2004 (9.Auflage). Brandlmeier, Thomas: Fantômas. Beiträge zur Panik des 20.Jahrhundert, Frankfurth a.M.: Verbrecher Verlag 2007. Braun, Christina von/ Mathes Bettina: Verschleierte Wirklichkeit. Die Frau, der Westen und der Islam, Berlin: Aufbau Verlag 2007. Calle, Sophie: Double Game. London: Violette Edition 2007. Capoeira, Nestor: Capoeira. Kampfkunst und Tanz aus Brasilien, Berlin: Verlag Weiman 2001 (5.Auflage). Celan, Paul: Gesammelte Werke. Vierter Band. Übertragungen I, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 2000. Certeau, Michel de: Kunst des Handelns. Berlin: Merve 1988 (Neuauflage). Danielsewski, Mark Z: Das Haus. House of Leaves. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2007. Derrida, Jaques und Cixous, Helene: Voiles. Schleier und Segel. Wien: Passagen Verlag 2007. Ender, David und Hauser, Jack: Miryam van Doren. Wien: Edition Selene 2003. Etchells, Tim / Forced Entertainment: Certain Fragments. Oxford: Routledge 2001. Fritz, Nicole: Bewohnte Mythen, Joseph Beuys und der Aberglaube, Nürnberg: Verlag für Moderne Kunst 2007. Gysin, Brion: Umherschweifen, Beute machen. Berlin und München: Janus Press, Edition Pixis 1997. McDonnell/ Karen O'Connell/ Giorgia Ryle (Hrsg): Krazy Kat. The Comic Art of George Harriman, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 2004 (New Edition). Miéville, China: Die Narbe (Teil I). Leviathan (Teil II). Bergisch Gladbach: Bastei Lübbe 2004. Nancy, Jean Luc: Am Grund der Bilder. Berlin: diaphanes 2006. Smith, Patti: Auguries of Innocence. Poems, London: Virgin Press 2005. Winterson, Jeanette: Der Leuchtturmwärter. Berlin: Berlin Verlag 2006. (11.11.2007)