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14.2.09

Books: Report on myself

Grégoire Bouillier

Only the French can explore sex and make it seem like a humourous romp through the Tuileries rather than a Henry Miller deviation, and so does Grégoire Bouillier in "Report on Myself."

I doubt that I'll add this book to my shelves or borrow it from the library, but it caught my attention because I didn't realize that Bouillier had a relationship with Sophie Calle, the voyeur extraordinaire, whose first popular exhibit if I am not mistaken was based on her exploration of a found Address Book, an exploration that took her to the faces and places therein. She has apparently not lost her flair for the unusual.

Sophie Calle ©

Apparently, Bouillier wrote of his relationship with Calle in an earlier book, "The Mystery Guest," a book that apparently received quite a bit of attention but which I clearly missed.


It wasn't until she made "No Sex Last Night" with my brother that she penetrated my consciousness and just made me wonder, "why." Why would peering into another person's life bring one recognition and ultimately some fame? Not today or then when she drove across the US with G in his Cadillac, do I understand the glamour attached to nothingness, not even when I conjure up Sartre at his existential best. And I am not anti-conceptualism!

But obviously more than the French are passive voyeurs.

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