Cally Spooner, 2020
Graphic design by Roland Brauchli, ed. Andrea Villani, Roos Gortzak, Vanessa Boni
English
2020. 236 pp., 100 ills.
Softcover
18 x 24.30 cm
ISBN 978‑3‑7757‑4681‑6
€ 45
Ingenious Self-Reflections
A tear, engineered in 1856 by Rodolphe—the adulterous lover of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary—is dripped onto a breakup letter and sent to the heroine via messenger. “There ought to have been some tears on this; but I can’t cry; it isn’t my fault,” he says, but not to her. Then, having filled a drinking glass with water, Rodolphe dips his finger and lets a big drop fall onto the paper, leaving a pale stain on the ink. Cally Spooner’s monograph documents a large eco-system of over 40 works which takes the incident of this false tear as a lynch pin, to reflect on the outsourcing, hijacking, erosion, decay, or destruction of personal, subjective utterance, in a 21st century hyper connected and financialized climate. For the monograph, Spooner describes each work in an active, present-tense voice, intercut with diagrams, drawings, culled and censored correspondence. New essays bring into focus central themes that play out in Spooner’s transdisciplinary performance work.