exquisite corpse

over the years i’ve come across the phrase “exquisite corpse” in many contexts. in lyrics, stories, and most especially when i went through a lengthy fascination with dada and surrealism. so i’ve decided to have a look and see what the fuss is all about, see what i’ve been missing.

exquisite corpse has its roots in a game called consequences and in turn spawned the more recent game mad libs. all are commonly grouped into the category “parlour games” or games played by groups of people indoors. they often involve word play and a form of logic but (as with charades) can be more physical. there’s no real winners as such in these games as they are more about process than product. usually the unabashed admiration of your friends and family is the culminating reward.

the surrealists may or may not have concerned themselves with admiration. what they did do was to elevate the work of the dadaists who had cracked open the pandora’s box of prescriptive or planned "accidents" as a means to creative insight. the game of exquisite corpse lent itself well to this ambition through providing what nicolas calas characterized as the "unconscious reality in the personality of the group". in juxtaposing, deconstructing, dissecting, and reassembling the commonplace it became possible to travel beneath the surface of culture, art, civilization, and realism and enter the realm of the purely symbolic because as calas put it; “realism destroys the symbol, the artistic sublimation, the escape. without strong symbolism, the artistic element is absent.”

here’s a work made by andre breton, his second wife jacqueline lamba, and yves tanguy, while on a weekend holiday together in february 1938.

collage - textual and visual - provides a simple, expedient passage into the realm of the symbolic through its apparently random, haphazhard assemblages. by the same token - and echoing calas’ sentiment regarding the “unconscious reality” that appears in situations such as that provided by exquisite corpse - there is a sense that one should, as brian eno put it in his first set of oblique strategies, ‘honour thy error as a hidden intention”. the sense being that in the randomness there is access to the deeper mapping of our subconscious - collective and individual.

children are playing a form of exquisite corpse when they buy those books that are filled with pages cut into multiple sections that can be flipped and overlaid creating fantastic new creatures with bits of each other’s bodies.

so how do you play the game of exquisite corpse? the following rules were sourced and adapted from this site.

~~each person will need a piece of paper and a pencil.
~decide on a sentence structure (e.g., article/adjective/noun/verb/ adjective/noun)
~on the first round, each person writes a word fitting the outlined sentence structure. ~(alternately and to my way of thinking, more interestingly, forget sentence structure)
~fold the paper over to conceal the written word and pass it to the next person.
~the next person then writes a word, conceals it, and passes the paper to the next person.
~continue the process
~when a round of sentences have been completed open the paper and observe.
~consider the results.
~corpses may be edited as seen fit.
~i also entreat you, make a *graphical* representation of what you have written.

a graphic version of the game could mimic the strategy employed by the surrealists which i have modified for inclusion here:

~gather a group of four acquaintances, friendly or not.
~each person will need a piece of paper and a pencil.
~the first person draws the head, folds the paper over and passes it on to the next.
~the next person draws the torso;
~the third draws the legs;
~and finally the fourth person draws the feet.
~the artists then unfold the paper to study and interpret the combined figure.

if you would like more detailed information about the surrealist’s use of the game as well as information about the surrealists themselves then visit photographer john rendell’s excellent homage to both.

perhaps you would like to contribute to an exquisite corpse online. this unfolding poem contains contributions by this writer and countless others.

a repository of things random as well as the means toward creating something relatively random can be found at language is a virus (named after william burrough’s famous assertion i think). there is an excellent collection of widgets to be found that will allow you to create lovely textual assemblages of which you can be alternately proud, ashamed, or astonished by. while you are there you can contribute to another unfolding exquisite corpse poem.