The Exquisite Corpse

How to Play the Famous Surrealistic Game

This game and its connection to Surrealism is widely credited to Andre Breton, the founder of Surrealism. I created a text example (below) so that you might get the idea ... It can be great fun.

 

 

Andre Breton, 1927

Surrealism explores the unconscious, often by juxtaposing images that don’t usually occur together. The human mind always attempts to ‘understand’ what it sees, hence will find or create some kind of meaning in the strange juxtapositions. So The Exquisite Corpse is a way to generate surreal text or art.



The example below illustrates how and why it works:

 

Person A writes a few words, say 6 or less, that have or suggest some meaning, such as

Sunset gives way to night

 

Person B sees Person A’s words, and adding to this limited text, writes his/her 6 or less words:

Realm of moon and stars

 

Person C sees only Person B’s words, and adds:

Worlds beyond our knowing

 

Person D sees only Person C’s words, and adds:

Past and future both

 

At this point we have:

Sunset gives way to night

Realm of moon and stars

Worlds beyond our knowing

Past and future both

 

Note how the poem suggests that “sunset” generates “past and future” … and so it does, in a sense, but Person A writing “Sunset gives way to night” probably had no such direct thought at all. The thought was conjured only by a sequence of minds influenced but indirectly by Person A’s initial mindscape.

 

In this example the composite text is fairly coherent, but you can imagine how the technique will often generate more discordant text - and when your mind tries to create coherence out of the discordant images, it forges new associations, insights, etc.  This is how the technique generates surreal text.

 

Surreal graphical art can be generated by the same technique.

 

          Person A begins with an arbitrary sketch in the middle of a “canvas” (or page).

          Person B adds to the first sketch, then covers A’s contribution before passing the evolving work on to Person C …

          And so on. Each succeeding participant adds just the immediately preceding sketch, all prior contributions being covered.

          So any two sketches in the sequence are naturally related, but the composite assembly may be surreal indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

This can be great fun. The words don't have to be poetic, and you may start out with any phrase (or sketch) whatsoever.

 

 

When is the last time you did something this cool?

 

 

Stephen Rowe welcomes correspondence of all sort at StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com

(watch for the period between Rowe and OriGraphics)

 

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