Hoy Me gusta: Cuidate de Sophie Calle o “¿que harás con todo lo que sabes?”

Desde hace años soy una amante del trabajo de Sophie Calle, por lo que me es imposible en una entrada compartir todo lo que admiro, amo y sigo de ella, por lo que nunca había compartido en este espacio su trabajo, por inmenso e inabarcable. A raiz de un proyecto que inicié hace unos días, la referencia del proyecto Cuidate de Sophie Calle ha sido inevitable. Quiero compartirlo con ustedes, aunque fué hecho en el 2007, me parece no pierde actualidad y es una hermosa fuente de inspiración. Cuidate “Cuida de ti misma porque yo ya no lo haré. Cuida de ti, porque a mí no me interesa hacerlo”. Con estas frases cierra una carta, con la que termina una relación, y lo hace por email. Al hacerlo nada le importa, no hay nada que decir, lo ha dicho todo, por medio de una computadora. La que lo recibe, tendrá que tratar de interpretar lo que en ese correo dice, o aprender a saber que ahí no se dice nada. Esa última frase “cuida de ti misma” revolotean en la cabeza de Sophie Calle, sin respuestas y sólo preguntas piensa que efectivamente debe cuidarse a así misma, esa es la prioridad, una prioridad irónica que Él mismo le ha dado.

Una receta que tal vez ayude a detener el enojo, el llanto, la tristeza y la incredulidad creciente a toda posible explicación que ella trate de buscar en ese email.

Sophie Calle, concluye, que compartiendo esta carta, logrará una muestra de las posibles interpretaciones que algo asi puede tener, dependerán de quien la lea, su circunstancia etc. Marca el sesgo y la intuición el hecho de enviarla sólo a mujeres.

Toma al pie de la letra ese “cuidate  a ti misma” como un “que harás con todo lo que sabes” y simplemente lo hace.

” I recieved an email telling me it was over.
I didn’t know how to respond.
It was almost as if it hadn’t been ment for me.
It ended with the words, “take care of yourself”.
And so i did.
I asked 107 women ,chosen for their proffession or skills,
to interpret this letter.
To analye it, comment on it, dance it, sing it.
Exhaust it. Understand it for me. Answer for me.
It was a way of taking the time to break up.
A way of taking care of myself.” Sophie Calle

Comparto la carta integra:

“Sophie,

I have been meaning to write and reply to your last email for a while. At the same time,
i thought it would be better to talk to you and tell you what i have to say outloud.
Still, at leat it will be written.
As you have noticed, i have not been quite right recently. As if i no longer recognized myself
in my own existance. A terrible feeling of anxiety, which i cannot really fight, other than
keeping on going to try and overtake it, as i have always done. When we met, you laid down
one condition:not to become the “fourth”. I stood by that promise: it has been months
now since i have seen the “others,”because i obviously could find no way of seeing them
without makeing you one of them.
I thought that would be enough, i thought that loving you and your love would be enough so that
this anxiety – which constantly drives me to look further afield and whichmeens that i will never
feel quiet and at rest or probably even just happy or “generous”-would be calmedwhen i was
with you, withthe certainty that the love you have for me was the best for me, the best i have
ever had , you know that. I thought that my writing would be a remedy, that my “disquiet” would
dissolve into it so that i could find you.But no.Infact it even became worse, i cannot even
tell you the sort of state i feel i am in. so i started calling the “others” again this week.
And i know what that means to me and the cycle that it will drag me into.
I have never lied to you and I do not intend to start lying now.

There was another rule that you laid down at the beginning of our affair: the day we
stopped being lovers you would no longer be able to envisage seeing me. You know this
constraint can only ever strike me as disastrous, and unjust (when you still see B. and K. …)
and understandable (obviously…); so I can never become your friend.
But now you can gauge how significant my decision is from the fact that I am prepared to bend
to your will, even though there are so many things – not seeing you or talking to you or catching
the way you look at people and things, and your gentleness towards me – that I will miss terribly.
Whatever happens, remember that I will always love you in the same way, my own way, that I have
ever since I first met you; that it will carry on within me and, I am sure, will never die.
But it would be the worst kind of masquerade to prolong a situation now when you know
as well as I do; it has become irreparable by the standards of the very love I have for you and
you have for me a love which is now forcing me to be so frank with you, as final proof of what
happened between us and will always be unique.
I would have liked things to have turned out differently.
Take care of yourself.

X

Por supuesto, esta obra vuelve a franquear las barreras de lo privado y lo público. Sin embargo, me parece más interesante la difícil barrera que José Luis Pardo establece, no ya entre público y privado, sino entre privado e íntimo[v]: privado es lo que la gente hace cuando no se la ve, cuando no está en una situación social pública, lo que pasa de puertas para adentro; mientras que íntimo es lo inaccesible para los demás, la verdad última y secreta de la esencia de una persona. La obra de Sophie Calle se establece en el reino de lo privado, pero no de lo íntimo.

The rules of the game are always very strict. In Take Care of Yourself I asked the participants to answer professionally, to analyze a breakup letter that I had received from a man. The parameters were fixed. For example, I wanted the grammarian to speak about grammar—I wanted to play with the dryness of professional vocabulary. I didn’t want the women expressing sentiment for me. Except maybe my mother . . . (…) I have my own sentiment—I don’t need that of others. Sophie Calle