This session with Conscious Writers Collective will explore how artists and writers construct intimacy, perspective, and narrative through imagined encounters. Using the work of French artist and writer Sophie Calle—known for projects that blend photography, storytelling, surveillance, and performance—we will examine how creative constraints can generate unexpected narratives.
Calle often creates elaborate situations in which people unknowingly become part of a story, following strangers through cities, inviting others to interpret personal artifacts, and inventing fictional frameworks that blur the boundary between fact and imagination. These unusual narrative strategies have inspired writers such as Paul Auster, Grégoire Bouillier, and Enrique Vila-Matas, who have incorporated Calle-like devices into their own work.
In this workshop, we will look closely at how intimacy is created in writing—through voice, pronouns, address, and narrative framing. We will also examine several of Calle’s staged scenarios, which rely on collaboration, chance, and invented rules, before writing our own short pieces inspired by Calle’s methods.
