The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism's Parlor Game

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.”

Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren is an associate professor of performance studies at the University of Washington, Bothell, and author of Hearing Difference: The Third Ear in Experimental, Deaf, and Multicultural Theater.

 

Davis Schneiderman is chair of the American Studies Program and an associate professor of English at Lake Forest College. He is the author of Multifesto: A Henri d’Mescan Reader.

 

Tom Denlinger is an adjunct professor in the Department of Art Media and Design at DePaul University in Chicago and the author of Territorial by Design.

 


Contributors: Tom Denlinger, Don Dingledine, Ray Ellenwood, Elizabeth Finch, Ken Friedman, Oliver Harris, Allen Hibbard, Kimberly Jannarone, Michael Joyce, Anne M. Kern, Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, Susan Laxton, Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky, Craig Saper, Ingrid Schaffner, and Davis Schneiderman.