A dream narrative of a sleeping beauty a nudist found unconscious on a beach intertwining different films, different bodies, caresses, screams of shock and cries of ardour, The Exquisite Corpus works to collapse the line between the filmed body, Tscherkassky´s nudes in search of each other and of satisfaction, and the film body, the celluloid that has captured these bodies, the celluloid Tscherkassky meticulously manipulates in his darkroom. Such darkroom magic teases and exposes the film itself, frames layered on one another, images masked and unmasked, perforations and flung celluloid strips playing their own game of seduction and consummation somehow at once on top of and within the choice (s)excerpts. This is where Tscherkassky´s love for celluloid is wedded to his source films´ love for flesh, where the pathways to climax narrative and sexual are built from the same component parts of mystery, attraction, rhythm, repetition, variation, new sensations, and ecstasy.
(Daniel Kasman)
