The motifs that emerge from the sketch offer a distilled understanding of the basic contrasts that shape a life in confinement: where those outside and those confined inside exist in opposition. Inmate P drew an instructive sketch filed, as per the protocol, under “what confinement looks like.” The sketch shows a first-person view from the perspective of someone who is, unquestionably, in prison. To illustrate this point further, Inmate P volunteered to fulfill the didactic segment of the game. From there on out, they subscribed to their titles as Inmate A, J, and P, respectively. Willingly, they saw their existence mapped out across a cartography of confinement that was as if everywhere and nowhere at all. Lacking access to others’ realities, the Subjects realized that their everyday life, and imaginative life, was restrained in oblique yet ubiquitous ways. Even in lacking access to others’ realities, the nature of the game still allowed for them to be misinterpreted. In a ridiculing hybridity, they did not reach a state of collaboration, but rather collective individuality. Even as their own creative urges freely rippled out scenes of a different nature, the lack of a common ground crippled their efforts. A taunting realization dawned upon the Subjects. The unsettling mismatch between the three sections makes each one of them into a mutually exclusive option. Yet as soon as this asserted sameness reaches the nodes, a crossover, its inner workings start to crumble. Within the folds, the scribbles show a highly concentrated amount of self-similarity. The grotesque figure suffers from too much discrepancy at the seams. But whether unfamiliar or familiar, the forms depicted in between the lines cancel each other out once they approach the threshold.
Perhaps, from the bottom to the top, the drawing shows androgynous legs and onto them a crudely transposed spiderweb-like construction reigned over by an erupted plant cell. Perhaps coincidentally, it followed a somewhat generic structure of a head, torso and legs. Only after all separate sections had been completed was the paper unfolded and considered in its entirety.Ī Frankenstinian creature was born by the Subjects’ first drawing. The paper skeleton would coerce the Subjects into an uncommunicative and unconscious collaboration, every contribution delivered on their own time, pace, and terms. Starting on a new section required an epistemic re-boot, and backward glances were strictly prohibited. Each would see only the section containing his or her contribution. The cook served them a paper skeleton folded in three parts, the recipe for a Cadavre Exquis. The Subjects gathered and took a seat with their backs facing the table. Epiphanies and oddities were ill advised. Nose pressed against the wall, the private chef recited the same menu of the day as yesterday. It was the parlor itself that avowed logic to those whose push-button nods preceded an announcement. Inside, muted newscasters mouthed matters for everyone to nod along to.
TO INFORM YOU FULL
Things and imaginings were reviewed on a television turned up to full volume. Conversation partners took turns pressing cassette players that reeled out different languages in reverse. Drunks burped occasional half-formed thoughts to an evaporated audience. The parlor’s regulars seemed stuck in a self-evident routine.
TO INFORM YOU WINDOWS
Draft wind pressed its face hungrily against the blinded windows of the nearly anechoic parlor. Its delayed and dampened rings fiddled with the locked doorknob. Yet suddenly, they found themselves inside where sound was weight, a monotonous off-key pulse that clouds your vision. The entrance into the parlor eluded them. As per the protocol, they would from there on out be addressed as Subjects A, J, and P, respectively. The three of them were summoned to the parlor.
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