THE ADDRESS BOOK

About the show

An address book found by chance becomes the starting point for a radical experiment. Artist Sophie Calle copies the contacts of a man she does not know and begins to reconstruct his life. She speaks with friends, acquaintances, relatives, and people he met only briefly. From their accounts, a portrait gradually emerges of a person she never meets in the flesh, yet who seems increasingly tangible. What begins as an act of curious inquiry transforms into a transgression of boundaries. Hovering between intimacy and distance, documentation and projection, the work raises key questions: Is it permissible to get to know someone through the perspectives of others? Who is actually telling whose story here? And where does the line lie between artistic freedom and intrusion? When Sophie Calle published her findings in the newspaper Libération in 1983, it sparked a scandal. The man involved described it as an invasion of his privacy. It is precisely this ambivalence that makes The Address Book (Das Adressbuch) a work of art that remains unsettling to this day—a mystery without clear culpability that draws the audience itself into the web. What remains of a person when others speak about them? Director Ruben Müller and his team approach this material with a style that is both documentary and poetic. Müller’s work explores real-life events and the ways in which they are narrated. For The Address Book, he has developed a staging that transforms Calle’s experimental setup into a theatrical exploration of the gaze, control, and the longing for the "other."