An Old Corpse, A New Lesson

Perhaps at some point you've done an exquisite corpse lesson with your students.   Perhaps you've even tried a digital or web 2.0 approach to this game (long time readers will remember us mentioning this idea here quite a while ago).   

This past week I took my students down to Moganshan Lu-  a street in Shanghai famous for its old warehouses that have been converted into art galleries.  One of our stops was my favorite Photography gallery, M97.   The exhibit itself was designed as a kind of puzzle - a sort of backwards-created Exquisite Corpse.   

Rather than traditional exquisite corpses in which the artist builds on a mostly concealed work by another artist, this show reverses the process.   A number of photographic works from Chinese artists were selected and hung in a specific order - each photograph relates in some way to the photograph that precedes it.  It can relate through any visual element or idea.  

For you Non-Shanghai denizens, don't despair.  The good folks at M97 have posted most of the show on their website.  You can view it here, but look now because its listed as 'current' so that page might change when the exhibit does in December.   

Take a look at the series they posted and see if you can guess which visual concept links one photograph to the next.  Warning- some of the photographs are graphic. 

Its a great way to get students to investigate art.  Why not have students curate their own exquisite corpse show using pieces from art history? 

Image Credit: Things Would Turn Unbelievable Once They Happened by Jiang Zhi, one of the works included in the Exquisite Corpse show at M97.