The Exquisite Corpse

Together, six groups of artists, three in Wales and three in Brazil, including Indigenous people from the Xingu territory and poets from Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, will create one “part” of a body performance. In “exquisite corpse” fashion, before any of these groups begin their creation process, they will have just a clue from the group before them, and nothing else! The artists won’t know exactly what the other groups have created, that is until they all come together to watch the final product.

The exquisite corpse baton will be forged in an online meeting between all the artists. They’ll meet collectively for the first time and get to know one another. They’ll share how they feel within their contexts, the contexts of their communities and territories, and their global contexts. They’ll discover what connects them, what divides them, as well as what feels urgent and meaningful to them right now. 

Taking on the themes of this meeting, our exquisite corpse baton will then embark on a journey; starting with the Wauja (living in the Xingu Indigenous territory in the Amazon south basin), who will record five minutes of material. Of this material, the Wauja artists will hand-pick only five photos and five words to pass on to the next group in Wrexham, Wales, the rest of the footage will be kept to themselves. The Wrexham artists will then creatively respond to these photos and words, recording five minutes of material of their own. From Wrexham, the same process will carry on, passing on the baton to the Complexo da Maré, the largest complex of favelas in Rio, to the Rhondda, to the Minas Gerais, mining state in Brazil, to its final stretch back in Wales- Caernarfon. 

The baton will then be handed over to our digital dramaturg, Jorge Lizalde, who will weave all the content from every location into one piece of digital performance, creating a story about how we live together, how we could or should live together.