Cut-up technique

Cut-up technique

The cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique in which a text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. Most commonly, cut-ups are used to offer a non-linear alternative to traditional reading and writing.[citation needed]

The concept can be traced to at least the Dadaists of the 1920s, but was popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by writer William S. Burroughs, and has since been used in a wide variety of contexts.

Contents

Technique

The cut-up and the closely associated fold-in are the two main techniques:

  • Cut-up is performed by taking a finished and fully linear text and cutting it in pieces with a few or single words on each piece. The resulting pieces are then rearranged into a new text.
  • Fold-in is the technique of taking two sheets of linear text (with the same linespacing), folding each sheet in half vertically and combining with the other, then reading across the resulting page.

History in literature

A precedent of the technique occurred during a Dadaist rally in the 1920s in which Tristan Tzara offered to create a poem on the spot by pulling words at random from a hat. Collage, which was popularized roughly contemporaneously with the Surrealist movement, sometimes incorporated texts such as newspapers or brochures. Prior to this event, the technique had been published in an issue of 391 with in the poem by Tzara, dada manifesto on feeble love and bitter love under the sub-title, TO MAKE A DADAIST POEM [1]

Burroughs cited T. S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land (1922) and John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy, which incorporated newspaper clippings, as early examples of the cut ups he popularized.

Gil J. Wolman developed cut-up techniques as part of his lettrist practice in the early 1950s.

Also in the 1950s, painter and writer Brion Gysin more fully developed the cut-up method after accidentally re-discovering it. He had placed layers of newspapers as a mat to protect a tabletop from being scratched while he cut papers with a razor blade. Upon cutting through the newspapers, Gysin noticed that the sliced layers offered interesting juxtapositions of text and image. He began deliberately cutting newspaper articles into sections, which he randomly rearranged. The book Minutes to Go resulted from his initial cut-up experiment: unedited and unchanged cut-ups which emerged as coherent and meaningful prose. South African poet Sinclair Beiles also used this technique and co-authored Minutes To Go.

Gysin introduced Burroughs to the technique at the Beat Hotel. The pair later applied the technique to printed media and audio recordings in an effort to decode the material's implicit content, hypothesizing that such a technique could be used to discover the true meaning of a given text. Burroughs also suggested cut-ups may be effective as a form of divination saying, "When you cut into the present the future leaks out."[2] Burroughs also further developed the "fold-in" technique. In 1977, Burroughs and Gysin published The Third Mind, a collection of cut-up writings and essays on the form. Jeff Nuttall's publications "My Own Mag", was another important outlet for the then-radical technique.

Argentine writer Julio Cortázar often used cut ups in his 1963 novel Hopscotch.

Since the 1990s, Jeff Noon uses a similar remixing technique in his writing based on practices prevalent in Dub music. He expanded upon this with his Cobralingus system, which breaks down a piece of writing, going as far as turning individual words into anagrams, then melding the results into a narrative.

Musical influence

From the early 1970s, David Bowie has used cut-ups to create some of his lyrics. This technique influenced Kurt Cobain's songwriting.[3] Thom Yorke applied a similar method in Radiohead's Kid A (2000) album, writing single lines, putting them into a hat, and drawing them out at random while the band rehearsed the songs.

William S. Burroughs taught the cut-up technique to musician Genesis P-Orridge in 1971 as a method for "altering reality". His explanation was that everything is recorded, and if it is recorded, then it can be edited (P-Orridge, 2003).

Stephen Mallinder of Cabaret Voltaire reported to Inpress magazine's Andrez Bergen that "I do think the manipulation of sound in our early days - the physical act of cutting up tapes, creating tape loops and all that - has a strong reference to Burroughs and Gysin...."[4]

See also

References

  1. ^ "manifestos: dada manifesto on feeble love and bitter love by tristan tzara, 12th december 1920". 391. 1920-12-12. http://www.391.org/manifestos/19201212tristantzara_dmonflabl.htm. Retrieved 2011-06-27. 
  2. ^ Break Through in Grey Room
  3. ^ See the notes for The "Priest" They Called Him, a 1993 collaboration between Burroughs and Cobain, released by Tim/Kerr records.
  4. ^ "Vintage Cab Sav," Andrez Bergen. Inpress, 1996.

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем решить контрольную работу

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Cut-up technique — …   Википедия

  • Cut-up — Le cut up est une technique (ou un genre) littéraire aléatoire, inventée par l auteur et artiste Brion Gysin, et expérimentée par l écrivain américain William S. Burroughs, où un texte se trouve découpé au hasard puis réarrangé pour produire un… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Cut La Roc — in 2007 Background information Birth name Lee Potter Born January 1972 in Brighton …   Wikipedia

  • cut glass — cut glass, adj. glass ornamented or shaped by cutting or grinding with abrasive wheels. [1835 45] * * * Glassware characterized by a series of facets, or patterns, cut into its surface. A marked pattern is roughed out on a glass object with a… …   Universalium

  • Cut-Out — Le cut out est une technique d animation. Comme une marionnette, un personnage en cut out est fait à partir de plusieurs parties indépendantes, telles que des mains, des bras, d une tête, des jambes et des pieds. Ces pièces sont liées ensemble en …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Cut — may refer to: The act of cutting, the separation of an object into two through acutely directed force Contents 1 Mathematics 2 Computing 3 …   Wikipedia

  • Cut Bank Ranger Station Historic District — U.S. National Register of Historic Places U.S. Historic district …   Wikipedia

  • Cut-to-length logging — (CTL) is a mechanized harvesting system in which trees are delimbed and cut to length directly at the stump. CTL is typically a two man, two machine operation with a harvester felling, delimbing, and bucking trees and a forwarder transporting the …   Wikipedia

  • Knife-cut film technique — Способ изготовления плёночных трафаретов …   Краткий толковый словарь по полиграфии

  • cut-card work — /kut kahrd / silver leaf cut in shapes and soldered to a silver vessel. [1915 20] * * * ▪ silverwork  technique for decorating silver objects, generally cups, bowls, or coffeepots, in which thin sheets of silver that have previously been cut into …   Universalium

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”