Colaborative project: David Parker, Kim Visudharomn and Guillermo Turell Yarur
The exquisite corpse is a visual game invented by the Surrealists. It commences with one artist, or ‘player,’ drawing the head of a being, covering it and passing said drawing to another player who would then illustrate the torso without seeing what the first player has drawn. The second player subsequently covers his image and passes it to the final player who is charged with drawing the bottom third, the legs and feet, of the image. The outcome is a single image that is always surprising, often humorous and sometimes rather grotesque.
Expanding on the collaborative spirit of the Surrealists, we decided to do our own version on an exquisite corpse with a slight twist: the three participants would not be physically present in the same place when the drawing is being made. Instead, during a specific time everyday for a week, all players must stop what they are doing and draw a part of the corpse depending on their rotation role on that particular day. Furthermore, their illustration must have relevance to their current surrounding at the time the drawing was done.
The main objective of the experiment was to explore the possibility of three illustrators with three distinct styles to synchronies their creative energy into creating one coherent image. Each section of the corpse is highly personal, owing not only to each participant’s unique relationship with time and space (i.e. what they saw) but to their individual visual language and taste (i.e. how they saw it) as well. The overall image, however, would hopefully have a consistent feel with the aid of a few rules, dispensed at the beginning of the project:
1. At the agreed time each day, each player must stop all other activities to produce an image.
2. Each player must draw something related to their immediate surrounding.
3. The players will take turns drawing the head, torso and bottom third in accordance with a rotation schedule.
4. The images need not be highly finished pieces but a good quality sketch. Hence, each player will be allotted no more than 2 hours to draw their section.
5. To maintain some form of visual consistency, the images must be rendered in black and white, though the chosen medium is at each artist’s own discretion.
6. The drawings should be done on A4 paper. Once again, this is to aid visual consistency.
Finally, in keeping with the Surrealists, each participant must write down their thoughts and explanation as to why they have chosen to draw that particular image during that specific hour and day. This stresses the importance of the actual process of the project, which could very well take precedence over the final images themselves. Furthermore, it showcases how random drawings with no individual significance on their own can be used collectively to produce some rather striking visual results.
