The first volume of International Exquisite Corpse Video Project is a collaboration between 37 artists from 16 countries.
The project was inspired by the classic Surrealists' drawing method of the same name, in which a paper is folded so that each contributor sees only a small portion of the preceding artist's work. When the last participant is finished, the sheet is unfolded to reveal a strangely divergent, yet contiguous form or figure. Using this semi-blind, sequential method, ExCorpse participants created minute-long video art segments in response to the final ten seconds of the previous filmmaker's work. Each participant was then asked to incorporate these seconds into their piece, creating transitions as they pleased, until everyone's vision was threaded together into a final "corpse."
"Only recently, could such a pan-global, audiovisual variation of this Surrealist exercise be produced with such ease and spontaneous free-association," said project coordinator Kika Nicolela, an award-winning filmmaker from SÑo Paulo, Brazil. Nicolela facilitated the project as viral social media experiment, following discussions in the Video Artists Forum on Artreview.com, an international social network for artists, curators and art critics.
Berkeley-based painter and multimedia artist Marty McCutcheon, who produced six separate pieces for the first volume, was also the first to suggest an exquisite corpse to Nicolela and the Forum. This process of video exchange between artists from around the world is very inspiring," said McCutcheon. "It illuminates the possibilities and potentials of global, collective creativity. Local photographer and video artist Brad Wise, who McCutcheon invited to participate, says that the project has given him a greater appreciation for the principles of Surrealism and, in particular, Salvadore Dali's "Paranoiac-critical method."
“Receiving ten seconds of experimental video from someone in another part of the world is thrilling,” says Wise. “This then inspires spontaneous visions and expressions of what should follow.” Wise, McCutcheon, Nicolela, and others in the group have since contributed to other video corpse projects, each with its with own themes and/or creative "obstacles,” and they hope that this screening at ATA will inspire attending artists to collaborate in new and unique ways.
ExCorpse, v1, was produced in nine threads over the course of 2008, and it has been screened in festivals and galleries throughout the world, including Brazil, Sweden, Germany, Greece, South Africa, Canada, Mexico, and the US.Ü The upcoming screening at ATA is the first time the project has been shown in California.
More about the ExCorpse project
Logline: A spontaneous experimental multicultural online viral video art collaboration between 37 artists in 16 countries.
Participating Artists: ÜH»lÀne Abram (France), Lucas Bambozzi (Brazil), Romuald Beugnon (France). Caroline Breton (France), Alexandra Buhl (Denmark), Michael Chang (Denmark), Jan Hakon Erichsen (Norway), Alicia Felberbaum (UK), Alberto Guerreiro (Portugal), Niclas Hallberg (Sweden), Nung-Hsin Hu (Taiwan), Ronee Hui (England), Jan Kather (USA), Ulf Kristiansen (Norway), Christian Leduc (Canada), Kai Lossgott (South Africa), Dellani Lima (Brazil), Mads Ljungdahl (Denmark), Ambuja Magaji (India), Hans Manner-Jakobsen (Denmark), Marty McCutcheon (USA), Kika Nicolela (Brazil), Renata Padovan (Brazil), Stina Pehrsdotter (Sweden), Tim Pickerill (USA), John Pirard (Belgium), Per E. Riksson (Sweden), Pedro Reis (Portugal), Pila Rusjan (Slovenia), Joshua Sandler (USA), Zachary Sandler (USA), Simone Stoll (Germany), Arthur Tuoto (Brazil), Anders Weberg (Sweden), Joy Whalen (USA), Alison Williams (South Africa), Brad Wise (USA)
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To read an interview with ExCorpse members, see:
http://momente.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/exquisite-corpse-at-monkey-town-new-york/
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For more information, visit:
http://www.vimeo.com/excorpse
http://www.artreview.com/profile/EXCORPSE
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