Full Description
In a parlor game played by the Surrealist group—the foremost avant-gardists of their time—participants made their marks on the quadrants of a folded sheet of paper: a many-eyed head, a distorted torso, hands fondling swollen breasts, snarling reptilian-dog feet descending from an egg-shaped midsection. The "Exquisite Corpse," as it was called, is still very much alive, having found artistic and critical expression from the days of the Surrealists down to our own. This method has been used in collective artistic protocols as the "rules of engagement" for experimental art, as a form of social interaction, and as an alternative mode of critical thinking. This collection is the first to address both historical and contemporary works that employ the ritual of the cadavre exquis. It offers a unique overview of the efforts of scholars and artists to articulate new notions of crossing temporal and spatial boundaries and to experience in a new way the body's mutability through visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic frames. Bringing together diverse writers from across disciplinary boundaries, this volume continues the cultural and methodological innovations that have unfolded since the first days of the "Exquisite Corpse."
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments Foreword: Totems without Taboos: The Exquisite Corpse
Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Algorhythms of the Exquisite Corpse
Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, Davis Schneiderman, and Tom Denlinger
Part One: The Ludic
1. From One Exquisite Corpse (in)to Another: Influences and Transformations from Early to Late Surrealist Games
Anne M. Kern
2. "This is Not a Drawing"
Susan Laxton
3. Events and the Exquisite Corpse
Ken Friedman
4. Cutting Up the Corpse
Oliver Harris
Part Two: Artistic Collectivity and Literary Creation
5. The Corpse Encore/Apres Exquis
Ingrid Schaffner (with a contribution by Elizabeth Finch)
6. The Exquisite Corpse Is Alive and Well and Living in Montréal
Ray Ellenwood
7. An Anatomy of Alfred Chester's Exquisite Corpse
Allen Hibbard
8. "together in their dis-harmony": Internet Collaboration and Le Cadavre Exquis
Michael Joyce
Part Three: Academia
9. Academia's Exquisite Corpse: An Ethnography of the Application Process
Craig Saper
10. Dead Men Don't Wear Pixels: The Online Exquisite Corpse and Process-based Institutional Critique
Davis Schneiderman and Tom Denlinger
Part Four: Recomposing the Body
11. Exquisite Theater
Kimberly Jannarone
12. Howling: The Exquisite Corpse, Butoh, and the Disarticulation of Trauma
Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren
13. "You Make Such an Exquisite Corpse": Surrealist Collaboration and the Transcendence of Gender in Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Don Dingledine
Works Cited
Contributors
Index
