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everything down before it escapes. a bear and a peacock. I’ve asked for the bear in a sitting posture, so I can
The time is running out. It’s 11.30 already, and I haven’t talked install him at the kitchen table. The journalist gets ready to leave, says
about my other project for Venice, nor about my mother. So I interrupt he has more than enough material. On the screen, the actress Miranda
the journalist. On 15 February last year I received two simultaneous Richardson is reading the letter aloud. The man speaks of his suffering,
phone calls. One told me that I had been invited to exhibit at Venice. his confusion, his anxiety. Also of his love for me, which he says requires
The other was from my mother: she had a month to live. I wanted to of him this frankness now. He has not been well recently, he says. In fact,
be there when she died, but everybody said: she will go when you he has not known himself. Take care of yourself. The tape recorder snaps
leave the room, when you’ve wandered into the kitchen with a cup. off loudly.
So I set up a camera in her room, and for 80 hours I stayed awake,
changing the tape each hour, hoping to capture the moment of her Take care of yourself is on show at the French Pavilion and Couldn’t
death. It was impossible: I couldn’t tell the moment. When I told my Capture Death is at the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale from
mother about Venice, she said: ‘to think that I won’t be there’. But she 10 June to 21 November
will be: my film shows the last 20 minutes of her life. It’s called Couldn’t
Capture Death.
The journalist seems stunned, as if what I’ve described is very
strange, or very familiar. To break the silence, I usher him towards the
computer at the other side of the room to watch a few of the films
from Take care of yourself before he leaves. The door buzzes again; it’s
noon. There are mistakes in the Libération article; I will have to phone All images: Take care of yourself, 2007, work made up of 106 photographs, texts, fi lms. Left to right from p. 68:
them. The sun has begun to stream through from the garden. At three Clairvoyant; Commissaire / Police Captain; Comptable / Accountant; Latinist; Physician; Styliste; Philosophe / Philosopher. All images courtesy Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris / Miami; Arndt & Partner, Berlin / Zurich;
o’clock, more stuffed animals will arrive from the taxidermist in the south: Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
p067-073 Sophie Calle AR Jun07.i73 73 6/5/07 00:57:46
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