This video was assembled by the New Zealand animation house Cirkus, and it’s actually a quilted-together work of a number of animators and writers. The phrase “exquisite corpse” refers to a kind of artwork where many people collaborate, improvising together, each person taking up the tale where the last one left off. (Here’s a group of exquisite corpse drawings done together by famous surrealist artists. I used to do a variation of this with my two daughters when they were little, and we used to call it the Doodle Game. More about that on a different day.)

Here’s a brief explanation of the phrase “exquisite corpse”, quoted from a book called Dada and Surrealist Art, by William S. Rubin:

The technique got its name from results obtained in initial playing, “Le cadavre / exquis / boira / le vin / nouveau” (The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine). Other examples are: “The dormitory of friable little girls puts the odious box right” and “The Senegal oyster will eat the tricolor bread.” These poetic fragments were felt to reveal what Nicolas Calas characterized as the “unconscious reality in the personality of the group” resulting from a process of what Ernst called “mental contagion.”

This playful concept is combined here with animation, which is one of the freshest art forms going right now. Animation work posted online allows an original piece of artwork to be distributed free to an unlimited audience. Because of the internet, all of a sudden art doesn’t have to pass muster with the gatekeepers. It doesn’t have to be represented by a gallery in order to find a following, but instead the intimate relationship between artist and audience which existed for thousands of years is recaptured.

There are some animators out there doing serious art, if a form so lighthearted can be called serious. Animation is fully as serious as oil painting, and maybe more able to express the real human condition. There’s just something about movement which captures the fragmented, momentary quality of actual life.

In the video posted above, apparently seven writers each contributed a chunk of the story, and the animators at Cirkus brought the story alive. I’m truly thrilled by the creative vitality which is nurtured by the internet.