Exquisite Corpse-19
Toronto initiated its’ Covid-19 lockdown the week of March 16, 2020. We all faced a mad scramble in the supermarkets, irrational stockpiling and fears of running out of toilet paper and daily essentials. On March 17, my partner and I picked up Sammy, a three-year-old, lean and muscular marmalade cat from the Humane Society. The next day my Video I class at UTSC went online. As we finished up the term and as our “stay at home” situations crept into a new normalcy, I started to think about what my students would do after the term ended in two weeks. Like all of us, they would be forced to stay in their homes, some in complete isolation, others with roommates, many far from home. I began to worry about their mental health, so I created the EXC-19 collaborative video project, based on the Surrealist drawing game, “The Exquisite Corpse”, modified for the moving image. Each video would begin with a written piece of 19 words. This text was then randomly and anonymously given to someone else to shoot video, photos or source found footage that somehow spoke to the written word. The footage would then be forwarded to another person for editing and finally a fourth person would create the soundtrack. The “collaborators” for each video would only be revealed once the video had been completed. After all, who doesn’t like a surprise? READ MORE
