The Exquisite Corpse

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."

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