During the 1800s, small groups of people would entertain themselves by gathering indoors to play ‘parlor games’ (e.g. charades). For the ‘Write and Fold’ games, the tools were as simple as a piece of paper and a writing instrument. Each player would write a short descriptive sentence or phrase according to a previously agreed upon set of categories. The paper was folded, only revealing the last word of what was previously written, then passed on to the next player for their contributions. This process continued resulting in an absurd story that was eventually read aloud. 1, 2
A similar game, ‘Head, Body and Legs’, developed in which paper is divided into three parts. One person draws a head, folds the paper then passes it on. A second person draws the body followed by a third person drawing the legs before a strange creature is revealed. 2 Artists of the Surrealist movement eventually adapted the concept, “exploiting the mystique of accident was a kind of collective collage of words or images called the cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse)”. 1, 2
This project was a collaboration between three graphic designers: Jack Gump, Hadley McLain, and Margaret Ryan. Over the course of eight weeks we created eight original exquisite corpses. The creative process began each week by choosing a theme and a color palette. Then each designer created a different part of the corpse (head, torso or legs) without knowledge of what the other two were doing. We also wrote our own flash fiction story about each individual corpse. The stories are labeled with the mark of the designer who wrote it and the order of the stories on the page corresponds to the part of the exquisite corpse each designer created. Enjoy!
