Watch Ted Joans: Exquisite Corpse (2018) Official Trailer

In 2001, David Hammons filmed Ted Joans unfolding the long artwork across the floor of the New York apartment of Robin D. G. Kelley and Diedra Harris-Kelley. Together with the artist Laura Corsiglia, they discuss each drawing and the creative and personal histories of the seemingly endless contributors. The camera follows the piece from fold to fold, emphasizing its physicality, the active process required to engage with it, the impossibility of viewing it in its entirety all at once. The artwork collapses into fragments but links its international participants, folding, unfolding, obscuring, revealing, connecting across great distances. In the end David Hammons adds his own drawing, continuing the long-distance transmission.