November 21, 2003

the exquisite corpse

Jill pinged me this morning intrigued by my IM message. ("The quarter is a corpse")

What does it mean? Done. Dead. Put a fork in it, this academic unit of time is cooked.

But it also brings to mind the exquisite corpse - a patchwork of images (in my field), a patchwork narrative (in Jill's). The surrealist game works like this:





hugo_eluard_breton_eluard.jpg
hugo, eluard & breton
  • the artist draws a portion of a figure (sometimes on an accordion-like pleated medium)

  • this portion is obscured or folded over except for a very small portion at the end, sufficient for the next person to know where to begin drawing. (Perhaps just two dots is all they get).

  • the artist informs the next where they left off - ie. those points are the top of the shoulders

  • the next artist continues the drawing in the same fashion
Repeat until the figure is complete.

There is a online version at An exquisite corpse . net.

Apparently the word version works similarly. The next writer in line gets just a few words to begin the portion, and passes just a few end words to the next and so on. I was hoping for an example which I could link to. Instead I found a number of literature classes using this Cadavre Exquis as exercises and assignments. (For example"English 290 : computer mediated communication" at Malaspina University, British Columbia, Canada.

Anyone want to play with me? If so, comment and make sure you fill in the e-mail portion of the submission box. The participant order will follow the order of the comments.

Let's say Starting on Monday, December 1, I'll post here "Cadavre Exquis 1" - but display only the last seven words. The complete entry will not be posted until all are complete. After my post, the second person will do the same, post my seven words - hide the rest except their last seven words, and so on until all participants have written - all the while maintaining that linky love thing. When the path is complete, we reveal our obscured posts and have a merry time blog hopping to read the entirety.

Game on.

UPDATE: It's not too late to join the fun. If you don't have a blog, sign up anyway and when it gets time for your bit, send it to me and I'll post it here.

Posted by weez at November 21, 2003 06:53 AM | TrackBack
Comments

I'm in.

That is, I'm in but I'll be travelling, but heck, nah, I'll have a net connection, and some time. I'm in.

What, exactly, is a "quarter", anyway? Here in Norway we just do semesters, spring and autumn, and this is end of semester - there's 21 days allowed for grading final papers or exams, so if the final grades are to be in before the holidays, papers or exams are in the end of November or very early December. Students are sweating, swotting, frantically writing.

But you have time for a whole new academic sort of part of the semester now?

Posted by: Jill at November 21, 2003 10:50 AM

George and I used to write poems with a group of friends this way when we were getting our MAs. It's a lot of fun, so certainly count me in.

Posted by: chuck at November 21, 2003 12:02 PM

By teh way, "The quarter is a corpse" is a beautifully evocative phrase. "The semester is a cadaver" just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?

Posted by: chuck at November 21, 2003 12:04 PM

yes please

Posted by: beaujay at November 21, 2003 12:30 PM

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Posted by: nain at November 21, 2003 01:39 PM

Elaine - you're in.

Don't care if it's under duress. The ate has spoken. (and besides, you'll be good).

Posted by: weez at November 23, 2003 08:45 AM

Mmm - if it's not too late, I'd like in, please! I also participated in the graphical online version of Exquisite Corpse - it was great but petered out pretty quickly, alas.

Posted by: Bill at November 27, 2003 09:22 AM

Mm, tried to link to my Corpse (curse you, no-HTML-comments!):
http://anexquisitecorpse.net/cadavre-exquise/crypt/000022.shtml

Posted by: Bill at November 27, 2003 09:27 AM

You're in! I am going to send emails to get this party going.

I really like the graphic ones (that's where I came from). If you start another graphic round I'd be happy to play with that one.

Posted by: weez at December 5, 2003 08:55 AM

Well, the site I participated in has been inactive for a while, and I really don't like the alternative one (that the creator keeps promoting in the comments of the original site). But if you can think of someone else who might like to do one or a few, I'd be happy to manage the project(s).
Wait until I get back from the States on Monday (Dec. 15), then if you like maybe we can post a collective call for participants in a time-limited graphical Corpse project. Sound like fun?

Posted by: Bill at December 12, 2003 03:46 PM

much fun.
So we have a corpse of at least two.

Posted by: weez at December 12, 2003 06:25 PM

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