Inventing the Body

A printer’s exquisite corpse.

A printer’s exquisite corpse. [Madison, WI]: Published by Silver Buckle Press, University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, 1992.

Lewis Koch. Double caution totem. Atlanta, GA: Nexus Press, 1993.

Both of these publications use an exquisite corpse format. The name was given by the Surrealists to the results of a game they engaged in where drawings were passed and developed from one artist to the next, often with the previous work partially concealed. In A printer’s exquisite corpse thirty-four artists printed individual body parts (using letterpress as well as other print media) which are housed in a divided box. The prints may be interchanged to create different figures. Lewis Koch’s photographic accordian book Double caution totem consists of vertically stacked shots of various street poles. With this totem arrangement, and despite the inanimate nature of the objects, the viewer constructs an image of a kind of mechanical figure, or automaton.