Age: About 90.
Appearance: Like a thing, and then another thing, and then another thing, but all joined together so they look like the same thing.
What the hell? It means "Exquisite corpse" in French. It's the term surrealists used in the 1920s for the collaborative process in which a different artist adds a new line of a story, or a new piece of a drawing, without seeing the rest. The phrase "cadavre exquis" emerged during a game, apparently.
It's Consequences! It's bleedin' Consequences! Bit of paper, lots of booze, foldy-foldy: funny picture! Tim Burton prefers "cadavre exquis".
Well, there's a surprise. And he's inviting punters to join him in using the technique to build a story about his animated character Stainboy. They contribute sentences online, you see.
Oh well, if it's "online". . . Don't be like that. Cadavre exquis has a distinguished history. Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp and all that lot, they loved it. In 1995, Art Spiegelman and a team of artists even compiled a whole comic book with the method. It was called The Narrative Corpse.
Catchy title. Mmm.
Do people just email Burton their sentences then? No, actually . . .
It's another Twitter thing, isn't it? Yes. Sighs forlornly #willheevercatchup
Stop that! You'll cheapen the symbols. Punctuation is our national heritage. Right.
So how's it going? It's not that bad. Something about a puddle of goo . . . Stainboy takes off his cloak . . . lots of things not quite happening. But I suppose Burton can only choose what people write, can't he?
Sorry, "choose"? Yes. You can't just put every tweet up there, willy-nilly. So each day, Burton . . .
Or maybe his assistant? . . . or yes, maybe his assistant, chooses a few new lines to add on the end.
Isn't that cheating? It's artistic cheating.
Do say: "'Look!' said Stainboy. 'It's my co-star Helena Bonham Carter!'"
Don't say: "Stainboy had waited long enough. It was time to blow up Robin Hood Airport."
