THE EXQUISITE CORPSE

A PROEM

TEXT A:

Let us summarize the principal characteristics of a rhizome: unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it brings into play very different regimes of signs, and even nonsign states. The rhizome is reducible neither to the One nor the multiple. It is not the One that becomes Two or even directly three, four, five, etc. It is not a multiple derived from the One, or to which One is added. It is composed not of units but of dimensions, or rather directions in motion. It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle from which it grows and which it overspills.

A Thousand Plateaus Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari


TEXT B:

They began.
In a past moment, they began but did not know what this thing was or where it will lead or even if it will end. (A thousand and one nights?)

They know that they are working at unfolding a play* of some sort (whatever that is). Or is it a performance. Or is it an opera?

They are possibly writing for a future production but most likely for this moment now, when the idea of what a future might be seems too strange an idea to contemplate. This is why they are together. This is why they are not together.

Whatever this drama is, it happens in the moment of them posting. The drama of the Dropbox!

(But one thing leads to another and back again – they are about to begin)

They know they are possibly also characters in this play – this constructed psychodrama. Where ever they are? Who ever they are? A covert neural network. A thinking aloud?

Even though they are in the same show and that they don’t know who the others are in this show, whatever happens, they keep their singularity. In this unfolding they are not aiming to find one voice but a multitude that becomes an organism. A rhizome of difference…


Does it start in the middle?



(*The show might have a title. It might be The Exquisite Corpse? (Is it a mystery?)).