Who remembers playing Exquisite Corpse as an icebreaker during summer camp crafts or the first day of elementary school? You may not remember it by name, but it’s the group sequence drawing game where you draw a part of a body (the head, torso or legs) on a section of a sheet of paper folded in three, fold it behind the next empty section, and pass it to your neighbor who completes the next part of the body without seeing what you have drawn while you do the same. Everyone usually bursts into laughter after unfolding their collaborative designs at the end, embracing the incongruity of the mismatched body parts that result in absurd characters. Exquisite Corpse was popularized at the beginning of the 20th century in France when the poet André Breton and other early players in the surrealist movement started playing the game at recreational parties.
While Exquisite Corpse remains a classroom and art history favorite, TikTokers have practically translated the game to video format with impressive success. It all started in 2020 when a Canadian TikToker named Fran Johnson (@johnson_fran) posted a video complaining that other users duet videos without adding anything interesting to them. (A TikTok duo is a split-screen post where an original TikTok video plays on one side and the other user records themselves reacting, dancing, or doing whatever at the same time on the other side.) More often than not and to Fran’s point, TikTokers will just create duos showing off all glamor with overreacting to other people’s content.
Well, several users have decided to troll Fran in a decidedly wholesome way by means of excessive duets. First, someone dubbed Fran’s video and lined up her right arm side-by-side with Fran’s shoulder and bicep that were cut from the frame, gesturing flamboyantly with every word she said. Then another user played the first duet, gently rubbing a hairy beer belly in line with Fran’s torso. And then another person attached their left arm, then someone added their legs, and so on.
As the original video repeated itself, more users contributed their body parts and surroundings to create the rest of Fran’s body and surroundings in the world’s most engaging group project. One would assume that each addition would be the last and there would be nothing more to add, but it just kept going and getting more and more absurd. What started as a one-off rant video ended with a dog turning into a human, Legos all over the floor, and someone getting a foot massage, fully encapsulating the absurdity and creativity of the game. .
The Surrealists embraced play in their quest to enhance unleashed potential, or the “higher realityof the subconscious and the unconscious through the rejection of rational thought and its shortcomings. The arts and literature movement was rooted in the illogical, the impossible, and the metaphysical through uncensored experimentation, collaboration, and the limitless in the face of post-war disillusionment and trauma.
With TikTok and other social media platforms serving as a nexus for sharing information around the world, this 100-year-old revival of a beloved surreal game is a breath of fresh air after hours of catastrophic scrolling. through global atrocities presented at our fingertips. Even though it’s just a silly little joke, the notion of unlimited is tangible in this 11-person duo video that couldn’t have been achieved without a collaborative effort of passers-by venturing headfirst in the irrational.
