THE EXQUISITE CORPSE VIDEO PROJECT - Anders Weberg
Project url: http://www.artreview.com/profile/excorpse
WHAT?
The ECVP [Exquisite Corpse Video Project] is a video collaboration collaboration project inspired by the Surrealist creation method, the "Exquisite Corpse". The project is coordinated by the Brazilian artist Kika Nicolela and currently has 63 participating artists from 21 different countries.
The ECVP vol. 1 was made during 2008, with the participation of 36 artists. Together, these artists made 82 minutes of experimental video, divided in 9 chapters.
ECVP vol. 2 is just finished and had it's world premiere av V.art 09 i Värnamo, Sweden in September.
HOW?
In the Surrealist 'game', a paper is folded such that each contributor sees only a small portion of the previous contributor's work, and begins his own work from that small portion. When the last participant is finished, the sheet is unfolded to reveal a strangely divergent, yet contiguous form or figure.
Using the semi-blind, sequential method of the surrealists' game, ECVP participants create video art in response to the final ten seconds of the previous member's work. Each member is asked to incorporate these seconds into their piece, creating transitions as they please, until everyone's vision is threaded together into an instigating final "corpse."
While the Surrealists are said to have created the method almost a century ago, only recently could such a fast-paced, pan-global, audiovisual variation of this exercise be produced. The inspiring process of exchange between artists from around the world illuminates the possibilities and potentials of a globalized, collective creativity.
WHERE?
ECVP Screenings and exhibitions have been taking place in various countries since June 2008, such as Sweeden, USA, Greece, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa.
WHO?
Complete list of artists in both ECVP Vol. 1 and Vol. 2:
Alberto Guerreiro (Portugal)
Alexandra Buhl (Denmark)
Alexandra Gelis (Colombia)
Alicia Felberbaum (England)
Alison Williams (South Africa)
Alvaro Campo (Switzerland)
Ambuja Magaji (India)
Anders Weberg (Sweden)
Anthony Siarkiewicz (USA)
Arthur Tuoto (Brazil)
Brad Wise (USA)
Bruno Penteado (Brazil)
Caroline Breton (France)
Christian Leduc (Canada)
Danny Germansen (Denmark)
Dave Swensen (USA)
Dellani Lima (Brazil)
Fernando Velazquez (Brazil)
Gabriel Soucheyre (France)
Giada Ghiringhelli (Italy)
Giselle Beiguelman (Brazil)
Guillermina Buzio (Argentina)
Hans Manner-Jakobsen (Denmark)
Hélène Abram (France)
Jake Selvidio (USA)
Jan Hakon Erichsen (Norway)
Jan Kather (USA)
Joas Sebastian Nebe (Germany)
John Criscitello (USA)
John Pirard (Belgium)
Jorge Lozano (Canada)
Joshua Sandler (USA)
Joy Whalen (USA)
Kai Lossgott (South Africa)
Katja Bjorn (Denmark)
Katy Connor (UK)
Kika Nicolela (Brazil)
Kim Dotty Hachmann (Germany)
Kim Thøgersen Grønborg (Denmark)
Lucas Bambozzi (Brazil)
Mads Ljungdahl (Denmark)
Marty McCutcheon (USA)
Matthias Roth (Germany)
Michael Chang (Denmark)
Michael Greathouse (USA)
Mike Bennion (UK)
Niclas Hallberg (Sweden)
Nung-Hsin Hu (Taiwan)
Paulina Sandberg (UK)
Pedro Reis (Portugal)
Per E Riksson (Sweden)
Pila Rusjan (Slovenia)
Renata Padovan (Brazil)
Romuald Beugnon (France)
Ronee Hui (England)
Simone Stoll (Germany)
Sohrab M. Kashani (Iran)
Stina Pehrsdotter (Sweden)
Tales Frey (Brazil)
Tim Pickerill (USA)
Ulf Kristiansen (Norway)
Wai Kit Lam (China)
Zachary Sandler (USA)
EXHIBITION+SCREENINGS LIST
Braziliality
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol. 1
Date: March 11, 2010
Location: London, UK
Manipulated Image #10
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol. 1
Date: January 29, 2010
Location: Santa Fe, USA
Alucine Toronto Latino Media Festival
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project Vol.2
Date: November 20, 2009
Location: Toronto, Canada
http://www.alucinefestival.com/
Kulturpalast Wedding International
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol. 2
Date: November 19, 2009
Location: Berlin, Germany
http://kulturpalastwedding.wordpress.com
VideoDanzaBA
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project Vol.1 – Corpse#1 to #9
Date: November 14-21, 2009
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
http://www.videodanzaba.com.ar
Artists' Television Access
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project Vol. 2
Date: October 30, 2009
Location: San Francisco, US
CONTATO
Exhibition of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol. 2
Date: 10-11 October, 2009
Location: São Carlos, Brazil
http://www.contato.ufscar.br/portal
Magacin
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project Vol.2
Date: October 8, 2009
Location: Belgrade, Serbia
Artists' Television Access
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project Vol. 1
Date: 18 September, 2009
Location: San Francisco, US
V.art09
Exhibition of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol. 2
Date: 11-13 September, 2009
Location: Värnamo, Sweden
DConcept
Exhibition of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol. 1 – Corpse#1 to #9 and photos
Date: 11-22 August, 2009
Location: São Paulo, Brazil
http://www.dconcept.net
Head Quarters
Exhibition of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol. 1 – Corpse#1 to #9
Date: 18-26 July, 2009
Location: Melbourne, Australia
http://www.headquarters.org.au
Kulturpalast Wedding International
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol. 1 – Corpse#1 to #9
Date: June 19, 2009
Location: Berlin, Germany
http://kulturpalastwedding.wordpress.com
Community Screening Center
Exhibition of Exquisite Corpse Video Project – Corpse#1 to #9
Date: June 06 and June 13, 2009
Location: Berkeley, US
http://martymccutcheon.net/commonplace.mov
AS220 Gallery
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol. 1 – Corpse#1 to #9
Date: June 06, 2009
Location: Providence, US
http://as220.org/calendar.html#2009-06-06
Núcleo de Produção Digital Orlando Vieira
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol. 1 – Corpse#1 to #9
Date: May 15, 2009
Location: Aracaju, Brazil
Formverk
Exhibition of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol.1 – Corpse#1 to #9
Date: March 14 - April 19, 2009
Location: Eskilstuna, near Stockholm, Sweden
http://www.formverk.se
Muestra Internacional de Video GEN XY
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol. 1 - Corpse#1 to #6
Date: 05-28 March, 2009
Location: Vera Cruz, Mexico
Supermarket Art Fair
Exhibition of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol.1 – Corpse#1 to #9
Date: 13-15 February, 2009
Location: Clarion Hotel, Stockholm, Sweden
http://supermarketartfair.com/
aluCine Toronto Latino Media Festival
Exhibition of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol.1 – Corpse#1, 2, 3, 6, 8
Date: Nov. 20, 2008 to Nov. 29, 2008
Location: National Film Board, Toronto, Canada
http://www.alucinefestival.com
VANSA, Visual Arts Network of South Africa
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol.1 - Corpse#1 to #6
Date: October 30, 2008
Location: Cape Town, South Africa
http://www.vansa.co.za
Rural Research Laboratories
Arnot Art Museum
Exhibition of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol.1 – Corpse#1 to #6
Date: October 14, 2008 to October 28, 2008
Location: Arnot Art Museum Elmira, New York, USA
http://www.ruralresearchlabs.com
Indie - Mostra de Cinema Mundial
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol.1 – Corpse#2
Date: October 13, 2008 at 9pm
Location: Usina Unibanco de Cinema, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
http://www.zetafilmes.com.br/indie/ing/cg.asp?mostra=cgso
AZAdigitalCINEMAfestival
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol.1 – Corpse#1 to #6
Date: September 27, 2008
Location: Thessaloniki, Greece
http://www.azafestival.com
Monkeytown
Screening of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol.1 – Corpse#1 to #6
Date: August 18, 2008 at 10:30pm
Location: Williamsburg, New York, USA
http://www.monkeytownhq.com/8_18_08LATE.html
Formverk
Exhibition of Exquisite Corpse Video Project vol.1 – Corpse #1 to #3
Date: 4-7 June 2008
Location: Eskilstuna, near Stockholm, Sweden
http://www.formverk.se
DIGITAL BLIND DATE
by Juliana Monachesi
Boris, my cat, loves to watch TV. A few days ago, he was found elegantly seated in front of computer monitor attentively watching a screensaver slide show. I could deduce from this curious feline compulsion some computable data for a future study, that I have no intention to undertake, on what makes a cat freeze in front of a monitor that displays 2D images and sounds to which we humans can't really assign high levels of complexity. He seems more interested by simplistic graphic elements, like certain cartoons or vignettes inserted in the programming schedule. Possibly this is more my own conclusion, but to me it appears that animals and "natural environments" also receive special attention from the tiny feline heart that lives in my house.
If you ever tried to entertain a cat, you must know that none, even those susceptible to the seduction of electronic images and sound, spends too much time watching a TV show. Another bit of data, that could suit the study perfectly, but that I don't intend to undertake any further than this brief account I'm sharing with you at the moment, is this: although dullness could drive you to lose your patience (always so short), in contrast, you discover a cat has a special gift to find a myriad of stimulating aspects in the most boring of rooms. Lingering over a particular aspect feeds a genuine suspicion about what is most attractive: sounds. Not the sounds that a human can hear. Other sounds, other frequencies. Sounds cause Boris’s impatience to fade and captivate him for some extra time in front of the TV. I can't say what he sees exactly because he stares at one single point.
Lacking the abilities of an "all over" visual feline experience leads me to presume that Boris’s wide-angle-little-eyes capture everything at once. It’s not the movement that holds his attention, nor "recognizable" forms, but instead, his interested gaze suggests that the narrative that unfolds in front of him while staring the TV monitor can only be due to the sound sequence. Wide open eyes, little ears in constant movement and some degree of recent memory, for, when it "rains" on the TV, Boris raises his eyes. Given the advanced design of the cats' hearing apparatus, I bet a surround sound system would be for them mere redundancy or a focus of agony.
And what does all this have to do with the Exquisite Corpse Video Project? While watching again the first six experimental collaborative videos in the company of my cats, I noticed that Boris spent more time than usual staring at the TV. The sound of rain took his eyes off the monitor and made him look up, but soon he turned his attention back to the videos, drawn by the sound - or by something in the sound that my ear was not capable of grasping. Boris is an unconditional fan of the Corpses. But the biggest surprise came from his little sister, who never cared about any audiovisual production until today. After the first series of videos, Boris climbed the couch covered by his blanket and took a nap. Then Doris took over his post, making herself comfortable beside me to watch TV, maybe for the first time in her short feline existence (she's three years and a half) and viewed the second series of Corpses. Colors, spinning objects and synthesized audio were doubtless the elements that most appealed to her inaugural video art appreciation. Hypnotized eyes and little ears mapping the videos' sound space marked her first experience of audio-visual creation.
[For the record, I'm not that keen on the schizophrenic vision that advocates that animals are like human beings; my cats do not have beauty treatments in pet shops, they don't have a personal trainer nor a stylist, they don't have clothes nor do they consult with animal therapists; for me, cats are... cats. They're little creatures, holders of an acute animal sensibility and of a instinctive intelligence that make them aware when someone is sad or when someone is a potential threat – sensing a bad vibe, a cruel heart - nothing beyond the basic. I don't expect for them to be latent art critics; I didn't freak out about our joint session watching the Exquisite Corpse Project Video - of which they participated spontaneously and surprisingly of their own free will – or how they could be capable of comprehending a collaborative videographic experience, but it was fascinating to see Boris and Doris' interest in the face of such a radically opposing audiovisual product compared to the excerpts of cartoons, movies, series and other television drivel with which Boris has always flirted enigmatically within our home life. Well, call me crazy, but nothing convinces me that all this was mere coincidence.]
Speaking of this conspiratorial theory on the non-existence of coincidences, Magnolia [1999 – Paul Thomas Anderson] is one film that feeds this project. There's also a bit of David Lynch - think of the sequence in which Fred goes through a transmutation at the death penalty corridor and turns himself into his sub-alter-ego Pete in Lost Highway [1997]. Recall the frenetic passage of time at the final sequence of Adaptation [2002 – Spike Jonze], or the iconography of Donnie Darko [2001 – Richard Kelly], that crosses filmic excerpts of the Exquisite Corpse Video Project and even gets a more explicit musical quotation in Corpse#2, without mentioning Butterfly Effect [2004 -Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber] or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [2004 - Michel Gondry]. The Corpse videos work in a less didactic way than in a film like Memento [2000 - Christopher Nolan], which presents the audience with a dreamy and tragic possibility of living the linear temporality in a transversal and incongruously reversible form. The visual culture of this collaborative video project does not limit participating artists to the expected film references, but allows them to re-process in very subjective way, like in the citation, taken to the extreme, of an interjected/ interposed, iconography from the world of imaginary films like Psycho [1960 - Alfred Hitchcock], The Shining [1980 – Stanley Kubrick], Blade Runner [1982 - Ridley Scott], The Pillow Book [1996 – Peter Greenaway], The Blair Witch Project [1999 - Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez] and so on.
The visual repertory that feeds the shooting and creation of a one minute experimental video, having as starting point the ten seconds from the previous video, goes from Eadweard Muybridge to Ansel Adams, from René Magritte to Duane Michals, passing through references and parodies to road movies, action painting, reality shows, op art, "mockumentaries" and performance art. Another reference that is present in this collaboration of artists coming from all parts of the world is the element of conjuncture; something like a virtual site specificity. Meeting themselves and developing this project in the context of a social network, allowed them more intimacy in their interactions than many of the ones we have with a hint of nostalgia in embarrassing social situations like pathetic college reunions. [What is the purpose of gathering people who spent ten years struggling to keep the most cautioned distance from each other? Guilt? Persistence? Delusion? Even before these artists met virtually as members of the artreview.com Video Art Group, initiated by the Brazilian artist Kika Nicolela, they already had more in common and potentially much more to exchange for the next decade than these people who, having shared the melancholic late adolescence of the college years, schedule a dinner party to depress themselves collaboratively and then, victims of their own treacherous reminiscences, fall in the same trap all over again].
This “virtual site specificity” formalizes itself on the various quotations of the context in which the exchanges happen: ten seconds from the video received are incorporated to the next minute in the form of a video excerpt being watched on the notebook monitor; or the final piece of a soundtrack that barely leaves the previous ten seconds and becomes an audio mantra that makes the character in the next minute of video get bored and run from her office desk to a green outside area, anxious for a change from a virtual world to an organic exchange between her feet and the soil (as real as it can get, a shock made explicit as she leaves the "protection" of the studio for the "inscrutable" of the garden). Films inside films, re-edited excerpts (many times for better) and re-signified repetition of the deliberately mysterious tracks from the previous ten seconds. Is it just me, or are most of the artists more hermetic on the end of their piece than during the private fifty seconds? We witness game strategies organically created, tested, subverted and re-invented during the making of the game. For example, some artists choose to have a glorious entrance; others prefer to make their "entrance" almost unnoticeable. In order to maintain the continuity of the received piece, artists exhibit virtuosity in creating a subtle transition, or conversely, demonstrate another kind of virtuosity by employing a jarring, rebellious splice of incongruity (with or without a cause).
The Exquisite Corpse Video Project starts from a Dadaist method of creation using random and chaotic processes. Each artist responds to ten seconds of video - sent by the previous artist on the line of each video production - with one minute of his own, from which he sends the last 10 seconds to the next artist. The result is a video that runs about 10 minutes. The potency of a video made by 20 hands surpasses the current vogue of the collective practices in the visual arts. It's nice to be reminded that the artists involved in this project each have their own "solo" career, participating in important festivals and exhibitions worldwide. The ECVP experience is more than the emergence of a new "collective"; it distinguishes itself by an attitude of openness toward chance processes and the possibilities of sharing and creating that are offered by the decentralized social networks that are spreading on the world wide web. And it serves as an aesthetic answer to the jumble of audiovisual content uploaded on the same www, showing that there is intelligent life on the You Tube channels.
I've read some critics which I admire a lot, departing from, for example, the image of a child playing around a minimalist artwork to initiate their dense analysis about the visual and sensorial grammatical of this art (non)movement. This is because, when a subject is new, it demands a new vocabulary. And Leo Steinberg already taught us that art, whether it be modern or ancient, constantly requires new criteria of analysis. From the formalism and space arrangement criteria, passing by interchangeable content criteria - according to the time in which an artwork is made, read and re-read - to biographical and other criteria that stand between normalcy and idiosyncrasy, between the generic and the particular, between social context and the singularity, Steinberg stresses the importance of establishing as interpretative starting point the focus on the provocations of a new art in order to investigate its intentions in a disarmed way. "A succession of other criteria and none of them obsolete", writes the noted New Yorker critic in the introduction of a recent re-editing of his famous essay "Other Criteria" (1972).
My "feline appreciation" approach as a doorway to the ECVP is due to this: facing a new artistic provocation, the critic must put her/his criteria aside to better understand the work intentions. Using this line of thought, I recognize not only that the biggest connection among the artists' blindly made fragments relies on the random collage of noises, songs, sounds and soundtracks, a real collision of references and preferences that makes each video an antidote to the audiovisual monotony, but I also conclude that this group reflects the digital culture we are currently immersed in, a culture not fragmented anymore as the post-modern culture, but splintered and precarious when it comes to production of meaning. The Exquisite Corpse Video Project presents us this new world, mimicking its inherent shattering and precariousness, while simultaneously generating new meanings to the contemporary experience.
On the last three videos I watched (Corpse#4, Corpse#5 and Corpse#6), the blind collective creation of meaning is gradually refining itself even more. The nudity of a performer in the streets of Sao Paulo on Kika Nicolela's piece moves to the artist Alicia Felberbaum who photographs a beach with bathers overlapped with images of people indoors. When her fragment ends with a couple hanging out at the seaside, it suggests to Ulf Kristiansen a group of animated characters in a Tarantinian battle with the same seashore landscape as the background; the man beats his dressed-as-a-rabbit opponent and celebrates his triumph by kissing a girl, an innocent kiss that transforms itself in the hands of the artist Anders Weberg, in an ardent kiss that, by free association, leads Marty McCutcheon to follow the collage with a snail; then he inserts himself - a man with a hat in a forest - apparently disturbed by the image of the snail in front of him; and so on. The Corpse#6 shows the collective of artists in great shape and in synch with the ECVP format, what leads us the audience, to anxiously await the new batch of corpses.
Juliana Monachesi holds a master’s degree in communication and semiotics from Pontifi?cia Universidade Cato?lica de Sa?o Paulo, earned for her thesis Quebra de padra?o: Novos para?metros para a cri?tica de arte no contexto da cultura digital, defended in June 2006, under the supervision of Professor Doctor Giselle Beiguelman. A journalist specializing in visual arts, she is a collaborator for newspaper Folha de S.Paulo and several cultural magazines, such as Bravo!, Bien’Art, and Tro?pico, besides being a member of the Brazilian art collective Canal Contempora?neo. As an art critic, Monachesi has worked since early 2002 in the Projects Season of Pac?o das Artes. She was adjunct curator for the project Rumos Itau? Cultural Artes
Visuais 2001/2003, and curated the exhibitions afotodissolvida (2004), at SESC Pompe?ia, Arquiteturas Subjetivas (2003, at Pac?o das Artes), A Casa Oni?rica (2003), during the contemporary art week of Sa?o Joa?o da Boa Vista, Manifestos Contempora?neos (2003), at SESC Vila Mariana, and Recortar Colar | CTRL C CTRL V (2007), at Sesc Pompéia, among others.
Monachesi holds a degree from the Ca?sper Li?bero School of Social Communication, where her course conclusion work, carried out in the year 2000, was the book-news story Sem ti?tulo - Arte brasileira da de?cada de 80 a 2000.