11. An Exquisite Corpse: Experiments in Practicing Better Relations as Scholars During Uncertain Times
The Exquisite Corpse (Le Cadavre exquis, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-explaining-exquisite-corpse-surrealist-drawing-game-die) is a collaborative game of imperfect assemblage: each participant adds to a composition in sequence, not knowing or knowing little of what was added beforehand. In this panel, we deploy the “exquisite corpse” as a method and provocation for survival, collaboration, and playful relations during these uncertain times, investing not in fixed outcomes but emergent relationships and knowledges.
We invite anyone interested in an imaginative and experimental exercise, and in forging a liminal space of collaboration and solidarity, to join us in collectively creating an exquisite corpse. Individual submissions should not be traditional conference presentations but stories, poems, visualizations, or other narrative forms that center around research spaces unsettled by disturbances, quakes, fires, waters, or human catastrophe; timelines, career trajectories, research plans, budgets or any project plan disrupted in the face of trauma and uncertainty; relationships and bodies broken, brittle, and precarious. The only condition is that you leave your contribution open to articulation, re-pair, and imaginative attachments that can ferment unsuspected forms of sense-making, relationship-building, knowledge-production, and negotiation. Collectively, we will then assemble and draw connections that create multiple possibilities and outcomes for a more careful academic practice. Through the configuration of this exquisite corpse, we will explore the folds, redirections, and emergent properties that can generate good relations within the university and beyond.
We welcome fellow scholars from all disciplines, fields, and places of research to help us create and imagine re-paired relations within and outside of the university.
