Bio
Katharine Mussellam is a writer and cinephile from Markham, Ontario. She is excited to finally be involved in an actual form of the exquisite corpse game after years of listening to the song “Exquisite Corpse” from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, one of her favourite musicals. She has a BA in English from Bishop’s University and recently completed an MA in Cinema and Media Studies at York University. She is interested in art that explores gender, performance, ambiguity, and mystery, though her EXC-19 video only deals with the latter. She chose a sentence with a bit of mystery for what became video 47 to make the tone open to interpretation.
Videos
Questionaire
Why did you get involved in this project?
Information about the project was circulated to grad students at York University (where I was completing my MA at the time) and I thought it seemed like a fun and cool project to be involved in! I like any opportunity to be creative.
Did the one week turn-around for the work help or hinder your creativity?
Since I was the first person in the chain for my video, I didn’t have the same time constraints, I just sent in my words once I had come up with them. However, I did try not to overthink them too much, just went with an idea that came to me fairly quickly, while still thinking carefully about the number of words. I enjoyed that, since most of the time I mull ideas over for quite a while before starting to actually write them down.
How did you feel about working on a project where you didn’t know who you were collaborating with?
It was fun and exciting, not knowing what would happen after I made my contribution. In the past I have enjoyed writing games where different people contribute to a story without knowing what the whole picture will turn out to be, so I was intrigued how something similar to that would play out when video and audio were involved. I think knowing the structure of the creation process for each video, I deliberately wrote something that was a bit mysterious, since there’s a bit of mystery to an exquisite corpse chain until everything is revealed at the end.
Has being involved in the project changed your thoughts on creativity?
No, I don’t think so. However, seeing others’ contributions to the final product did remind me that everyone can have a different interpretation and response to the same thing.