"You a word a cadavre exquis
fold it over
the next person can’t see
on a piece of paper, then fold it fold it over
fold it over fold it over fold it overover so the next person can’t see what you’ve written fold it over , and you end up with a strange sentence fold it over the next person
The game is now known as Exquisite Corpse, after the result of their first go: Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau (The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine).
Exquisite Corpse gave Breton so much joy because it summed up the essence of the surrealist school of art he was trying to articulate at the time.
In his first 1924 manifesto, he told budding surrealists to put themselves in “as passive, or receptive, a state of mind” as they can and write quickly.
Forget about talent, about subject, about perception or punctuation. Simply trust, he writes, “in the inexhaustible nature of the murmur”.
The printed word, which he handles like a builder might a brick, is useful raw material the next person, as they can, might a brick.
The surrealists were among the first anticolonialists, the staunchest anti-fascists, proponents of social revolution and proto-eco warriors.
Malaysian-born artist Cheman Chong- Chong, whose work is currently on show at the Singapuke Art Museum. This survey exhibition is organised into nine categories: swords, whimpers, toasts, journs, fitures, fink-paste, infras, sure....faces and endings.
Exquisite Corpse sums up surrealism’s most lasting legacy to modern art today:
a tool that taps you into something , or receptive unexplored, a game for “pure young people who refuse to knuckle down”.
No comments:
Post a Comment