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📜 Kochhar-Lindgren, Kanta, Davis Schneiderman, and Tom Denlinger, eds. 2009. The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game., Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.
For a book with a surrealist game in the title, this one starts off great, because the introduction is written by a musician, DJ Spooky. It touches on topics of sampling culture, and makes clear, that the Exquisite Corpse will be here treated as a loose jumping-off point. Yet, the book is an anthology, and the case is different for each chapter.
Specific chapters: The Ludic
Book's first essay "From One Exquisite Corpse (in)to Another" ) provides a useful context for the usage of "games" among surrealists. We learn that they used to be played during long sessions that included many activities like séances, automatic drawing etc.
Apart from such general info on ECs in their native context, the article shows another surrealist game "One into Another", which was played by explaining a thing in terms of another thing. With taking a few liberties, the musical version (adaptation) is here possible, although virtuosic.
Imagine secretly a composer, band, singer-songwriter etc. A group suggests you another name of a musical creator — take a piece by this second name and start playing it. Gradually, play this piece as if you're playing some piece by the someone you chose yourself, while never actually playing any specific piece by your author. Others guess who you had in mind.
"This Is Not a Drawing" ) explores a tension, quite familiar to music gamers, between the process and the product. There's an interesting observation that ECs changed over time in this regard, with more stress on the "product" aspect visible in the 1930s.
"Events and the Exquisite Corpse" is by Ken Friedman from Fluxus ). The chapter's connection to book's main theme is rather indirect, but, happily for us, it provides a lot of theory and history on the topic of events, while keeping a strong musical connection. Another thread here is artistic collaboration and community of practice, which is close both as for the process of editing the wiki and game design.
Specific chapters: three latter parts
A chapter on cut-up poetry ended the part titled "The Ludic", which was generally the most related to our topics. The next part, focused on collaboration, starts with a reprint of an introduction to an exhibition from the '90s. Before presenting works specific to that event, it serves as a very broad introduction to themes of Exquisite Corpse. Among many associations, the article claims playfulness to be found in John Cage's 4'33'', which is delivered in the very same paragraph where chess is excluded from considerations of game theory , 113)…
This second part has then chapters on an artistic community in Montréal, and about Alfred Chester's novel. The final entry of Part Two has a subtitle "Internet Collaboration and Le Cadavre Exquis" ). Some minor thoughts here apply to working on an art-centered wiki, but the author, being an early practitioner, is more interested in interactive novels, and their later mixed media derivatives. The chapter is notable for referring to music-related works of Linda Marie Walker (p. 179), and to writings of Espen Aarseth (p. 168), an important pioneer in modern game studies.
Part Three: Academia dives into metaphors quite far from our topics of interest, especially the ethnography of application process. The second chapter here is about online cooperation (among students, in a project).
Part Four: Recomposing the Body starts off strong, with "Exquisite Theater" ), which in large part analyzes Parade, an unusual ballet where Eric Satie was involved as a composer, as characterized (p. 233):
No clear plot emerged, and what speech there was resembled not dialogue but rallying cries […]. Sounds included rhythmic punctuation such as the “rollings of drums behind a curtain” that accompanied the fatal jets of light. The music incorporated a funeral march “partly grotesque, partly poignant,” a percussive score, sound effects [like aforementioned typewriter], and perhaps also a Charleston.
This chapter also talks about Antonin Artaud, whom Surrealists expelled exactly for the working with stage, and we can learn here about Surrealists' attitudes towards the stage, which were generally quite critical.
Final two chapters "disappoint" (only from our very narrow and niche perspective!) "Howling" is a promising title, but turns out to be mostly "(non)sounding", and showcases darker side of surrealism, in parallel with Butoh, in their post-world-war aftermath aspect. And the final chapter is about a rock musical, but only texts of the songs are of interest, and the topic is gender identity.
References
📜 Friedman, Ken 2009. “Events and the Exquisite Corpse.” In The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game, edited by Kochhar-Lindgren, Kanta, Davis Schneiderman, and Tom Denlinger, 49-81. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.
📜 Jannarone, Kimberly. 2009. “Exquisite Theater.” In The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game, edited by Kochhar-Lindgren, Kanta, Davis Schneiderman, and Tom Denlinger, 221-242. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.
📜 Joyce, Michael. 2009. “«together in their dis-harmony»: Internet Collaboration and Le Cadavre Exquis.” In The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game, edited by Kochhar-Lindgren, Kanta, Davis Schneiderman, and Tom Denlinger, 164-186. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.
📜 Kern, Anne M. 2009. “From One Exquisite Corpse (in)to Another: Influences and Transformations from Early to Late Surrealist Games.” In The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game, edited by Kochhar-Lindgren, Kanta, Davis Schneiderman, and Tom Denlinger, 3-28. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.
📜 Laxton, Susan. 2009. “This Is Not a Drawing.” In The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game, edited by Kochhar-Lindgren, Kanta, Davis Schneiderman, and Tom Denlinger, 29-48. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.
📜 Schaffner, Ingrid. 2009 [1993]. “The Corpse Encore.” In The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game, edited by Kochhar-Lindgren, Kanta, Davis Schneiderman, and Tom Denlinger, 107-126. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.
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