For the first part of our remake project, my group and I decided on doing a remake of Sophie Calle’s work, with the core topic being the question of privacy. Within our remake, we wanted to combine suite venitienne and The Hotel, Room 47. Both of the artworks done in the same year, Sophie Calle expresses critique upon privacy through both following a stranger around Venice and taking photographs of hotel guests’ belongings.
To translate Sophie Calles’ work of the 1980s into modern ways of life, our main thought and inspiration was the internet and interpretations of privacy afflicted with our phones, laptops and digital databases. In a digitalized world, the internet introduces new possibilities of meeting and possibly following (similar to suite venitienne) a person/a victim. Through taking this step further, we did research on the worlds greatest and most popular dating-websites. The most present that caught our attention was Tinder, due to its fame and most frequent users belonging to an age group similar to ours.
To take our project a step further and reach outside our comfort zone, like Calle, we decided upon meeting people on Tinder under false pretenses, meeting up with them, and taking photographs of their personal belongings. This would not just illustrate the ongoing debate of privacy in the 21st Century but also a connection of emotional and practical importance towards personal belongings. In order to give the work spontaneous and aesthetic value, the medium to take the photographs would not be simple digital photographs but rather ones taken with a disposable camera of our own.
To capture our experience similar to Calle, in addition to the photographs we would also add detailed text similar to her own writing style. This means detailed, yet relevant and leaving the intentions of the artist to interpretation. This is supposed to create a physical copy, similar to a book, to expose our present interpretation of privacy to ridicule.
For Part 1, each of us four downloaded Tinder, matched different people and stayed in contact with them. The plan was to search for suitable victims and schedule a meeting in order to achieve our mission. I also met up with my victim, fulfilling such and yet also achieving our Ten Commandments (this entails amongst others a free beverage, no physical contact, etc.) I took film photographs and we arranged the development of the latter. Furthermore, the format and the final form of the project is open to question and debate and our present discussions entail how to summarize and finish our remake project for next week.
