THE SLEEPERS

"THE SLEEPERS" (2024) by Sophie Calle.

A collection of works by French conceptual artist Sophie Calle. It features one of her most representative series, " THE SLEEPERS ," which was released in 1979. This series was published in French by " ACTES SUD " in 2000, and has now been published in English for the first time by "SIGLIO."

One of the artist's first experimental works, In Bed With You invited friends, acquaintances and strangers into his bed. Twenty-seven people responded to the invitation: a baker, a babysitter, an actor, a journalist, a tailor, a trumpeter and three painters. The artist photographed them while they were awake and asleep, and secretly recorded their private conversations behind closed doors. The artist provided each person with a meal and, with their consent, surveyed them about their personal tastes, habits, dreams and interpretations of the act of sleeping in his bed. Some answered as curiosity, a game, a work of art or, as the artist himself intended, as work. The result, in his first exhibition in 1979, was a grid of 198 photographs and a short text.

Unlike the original installation, this artist's book version includes not only photographs and captions, but also the author's interesting novel-like story, which has not been translated until now. Starting from a liminal "mise-en-scène" of a bedroom, the text and photographs record the sleepers' coming, talking, sleeping, eating, and leaving, as if in real time. This intense, sometimes surprising, sometimes endearing feature dissolves into something like a "dream" over eight days. The rigorous and sinful research methods, the refinement of intimacy and exclusion, and the constant curiosity that are the "seeds" of many of the author's subsequent works are already embedded in this work. In this work, the author observes the sleepers, and the sleepers also observe the author. It is a mutually honest response. The work, which is bound in cloth and finished with a pillow-like softness, begins as soon as the cover is opened, inviting the reader to lie in bed.

*Note: This is a term that refers to the direction of a production, and describes how the scenes are put together and how the story is told.

hardcover
304 pages
152 x 203 mm
Black and white