Exquisite Corpse

The “Exquisite Corpse” is a drawing method in which three individuals draw part of a body without knowing what the other parts looks like. The results are often bizarre accumulations of characteristics and variations on themes. Here, three curators interpret this method in the form of a rich complex programme of short films on the queer body. Our bodies have often been the site of obsession, whether through our expression of love, sex, and sexuality or hatred of the abject, the ill and the repudiated. The beauty of the Exquisite Corpse is the conceptual interpretive shifts that take place mimicking how life continues to present itself to us. The HEAD: Conformity, anarchy, love and language. These are the musings of the films at the beginning of “Exquisite Corpse.” The face, the most visibly expressive part of the body, is the focus; rebellion, loss, pleasure and pain the subjects. (Jeff Crawford) ALL YOU CAN EAT – Michael Brynntrup BANGS – Carolynne Hew KELTIE’S BEARD, A WOMAN’S STORY – Sarah Halprin MOUTHPIECE – Gerard Betts The TORSO: The queer body attempts to rise from its abject position and does so triumphantly in these works. But not far from its pleasures are its pains, its tragic and rejected self, exposed for all of us to gaze upon. In the torso, the body annnounces its opposition to dominant culture, asking us to embrace the abject. (Ellen Flanders) THE LIGHT LIZARD IN OUR BELLIES – Sarah Abbott THE BABBLE ON PALMS – Steven Woloshen ACHTUNG – Michael Brynntrup HAND JOB – Wrik Mead The TAIL: From foot fetish to pussy power, the films in the later half of “Exquisite Corpse” reflect on the physicality of seduction and the mechanics of motion. (Deirdre Logue) MY CUNT – Deb Strutt and Liz Baulch MAKBUL – Huseyin Karagoz ANIMALS IN MOTION – John Straiton