Exquisite Corpse

The Artswipe

Exquisite Corpse, 2007

Video still

MySpace is a place where 'friends' unite each other in interesting creative projects and play. Queen of the realm, The Divine Miss White, has spent the last four weeks promoting various bloggers on her page and if you hadn't noticed, The Artswipe was one of four featured during the week of 18-25 February. Last week, all sixteen of her featured cast of diverse bloggers were engaged in a challenge to create a literary 'exquisite corpse'. The Surrealists first played this collaborative game called 'exquisite corpse', whereby one participant would create an image then conceal most of it, revealing only a small section. The next artist continues the image by using the visible bit of the previous participant's contribution. As The Divine Miss White details on her MySpace blogging challenge, the game can be played as a writing exercise:

« write in turn on a sheet of paper
« fold it to conceal part of the writing
« then pass it on to the next player for further contribution

The Artswipe contributed to the 'corpse', which was adjudicated at MySpace by The Divine Miss White over the last seven days. Below I have reproduced The Artswipe's section, preceded by the last three words (transcribed in italics) written by the blogger to play the game before me, and whose words inspired my creative turn. If you care to read the entire corpse, check it out at MySpace.

As for the inspiration for my 250-words-or less tale? Well, I tried not to give it too much thought as I was so wanting to channel some good ol' fashioned stream of consciousness. That's what the Surrealists would have wanted. But as I'm just too much in the moment, and really such a cerebral dilettante, I really felt it important to adapt an anecdote I recently overheard at an art party, where an artist broke up with their painter partner because his art was shit.

--

fight another day.

Admitting defeat had always been out of the question. But after witnessing the aesthetic horrors of his so-called art, I just knew it best we break up. I'd met him twelve months earlier through a friend of a friend of a friend of someone who knew Allen Ginsberg – or was it William Burroughs, I can't recall. That whole Beat poetry connotation of the nomadic drifter trailblazing through the American heartland really stirred up my reproductive system. And because he was an artist – a connoisseur of meaning making – I just had to have him. While the sex was creative, he held out on showing me his art. All I knew was that he "painted with light" as it was written on his business card. So I go to his art show held at a converted factory used for the occasional exhibition, happening or yoga class. A few people I recognize are mingling with red cask wine in plastic cups. I don't see any art. Meg, whose claim to fame is that she's related somehow to Sharon Tate – or was it Roman Polanski, I can't recall – tells me his art "negotiates fault-lines in everyday visuality". Meg is studying sociology and can sometimes be such a cunt. When she realizes my frustration at not grasping her university babble, her eyes drift heavenward, prompting me to look up and behold the elusive art. All I see is a skylight upon which a light-switch was crudely painted.