Three Ideas on the Idea of “Normal”
Sophie Calle is a French writer and artist, whose work has generally focused on the human condition in respect to vulnerability and intimacy. “The Hotel” is a written piece based on an actual account of her becoming chambermaid at a Venetian hotel for three weeks. Sophie Calle writes “The Hotel” as a series of diary entries over the course of several days. The text expresses her idea of the users’ experience of Venice as a place through very generic objects and for their users’ intimate use within the hotel room. The objects within a hotel room, due to the nature of travel, become symbols of not just the most ordinary and most used objects of everyday life, but also the most extraordinary objects and things that are most cherished. Calle treats the very boring and familiar things, such as clothing and toiletries, as the protagonist of the story – the quintessential elements of peoples’ lives and that which provide a greater understanding of the people dwelling within the room.
The objects within the room are themselves interesting enough, as they showcase things which people “cannot live without” – ultra personal things of everyday life. Each person reading the text can relate to the types of clothing’s, books, and other common objects she refers to, but as well understand how the careful curation of the objects within our lives becomes a significant part of a persons’ self-identity. “The Hotel” series becomes an important piece in our own understanding of how ordinary objects come to define us from not only an external perspective, but also how we define ourselves.