'cut-up method'?" is harder than sketching an
imprecise answer.
If you want a somewhat canonical definition --
you won't get it --
but you could look at William Burroughs's
"The Electronic Revolution", which is online.
Please note, when doing so, that a somewhat
famous French theorist described that text
as "the miserable bottomscrapings of a long-dead
avante garde, itself hopelessly obsolete."
Which would be a good place to start understanding
the CRITIQUE of the cut-up method.
But before proceeding, here is a simple, standard,
recipe for doing it:
Take 2 pieces of paper with writing on them, and
cut them both down the middle vertically. Put
two of the half-pages together and try to read
across the line.
You should find that, while the resulting text does
not make a lot of sense in a normal literary fashion,
it does *inspire new ideas that you never thought
of before*.
In this sense it is somewhat like "free association",
but instead of me saying "Panda" and you saying
"Terrorist" (or whatever), the paper is giving you
the random elements.
Thus, it has been used as a "method" to help
break down old associations and put in new ones.
(Burroughs pilfered some of his material from the
Scientologists.)
Kathy Acker was a Burroughs fan/acolyte, but she
says (in Empire of the Senseless) that the cut-up
method *by itself* does not work -- she claims that
to break down associations, you have to use the
forbidden language, say the taboo things -- and then
the taboos will lose their power. She nevertheless
uses some version of the cut-up method, at least
in early works, e.g. "The Burning Bombing of
America", and probably in the same book in which
she critiques it. And Burroughs uses a lot of
taboo language. (He is more famous for explicit
sex than for the recombinent collage style in
which the sex is presented, but the two go
hand in... whatever... for him.)
I certainly think there is something to both of these
perspectives -- and also to the aforementioned
French theorist's point of view on the matter.
This was Guy Debord, incidentally, and the
reason he felt he could weigh in is that he too
was interested in finding ways to break down
and rearrange power structures. However,
he wanted to do it with what he saw as a
more theoretically and practically sound
approach. I'm not sure I understand his
approach completely, however, I feel that
that my own work on "scholiumific information"
in the Arxana project is inspired by the
work of the people in his movement.
My sense is that instead of focusing on "random"
texts a la Burroughs, or "taboo" texts a la Acker, the
Situationists have often focused on the "strategic
overlay" (and/or juxtaposition) of texts. They
just don't want you to passively absorb things!
So, they do often want to *disrupt* -- but they also
often want to create work that is relatively easier
to comprehend, or at least to *apprehend* on
intellectual levels.
But my view is that (in)fighting in these matters
is not called for. Everyone who is working in
these ways has pretty similar goals. (Getting
text to help achieve novel, inspiring, or
*procedural* things.) And they are all aware of
the nature of "text as remix", and they are all
studying the ways in which textual manipulations
themselves have an effect.
They also have the convenience of being dead,
which I don't share, so I feel obliged to provide
you with a fresh example to complete my
introduction.
SOUND VS. SILENCE
for a while you sent me things back.
then I started to send you postcards,
and mostly you did not send me anything
about "karma", in an admittedly somewhat
heavy-handed way, as being about making
as few waves as possible. This was all some
sort of coincidence; since I stopped writing,
SEX IS JUST THIS THING THAT FEELS GOOD
and everyone on our planet knows about it completely
and the original Mister Smiles
borderline talks about exploding certain
tangential black powedr exploseives
goodnight
squeeking
lonely bad
poetry goodnight
since entities
of nothing begins:
there's some R&B type of singing coming out of the Men's
grumble, growl, enchant, embark --
"You will be happy to know that I have been slowly replacing my
admiration of your famous girlfriend with steadily increasing doses of
the drug Musine."
It has everything to recommend it:
Quiet, secluded, decent amenities;
it's across the street from a graveyard;
"my sister" begins to read from manuscript! along
"san fransisco" heights overlooking some dumb continent
But what really gets me down
is these guys who "dress down"
throw Our Lady's keys out the window and call her a bitch. I'm sorry
if you find this opinion disrespectful, but before it gets you all hot
and bothered, let me remind you who you are talking to
Fuckers make me look like shit
when I dress up.
Please do not write
of scent of mint and postscript of intitites of
sect of misteries and please do not forgive Texctures of
Silver Sharpies of Thought and our basements are not
our own subways and sighnyournaem noething of touch
is going to likely reamain anyway the same thongi thextures of
thought
the classical "hourglass shaped" body of
textures and swayng side to side
nohting but begins
anyway, i would
fill up the rest of the "card" with a like-wise proportion, but i
exchanged it for the one contemporary book I hadn't read --
the correspondence between text and pictures
doesn't seem to work that well
and I don't have much
to say
I Note also that this culminating message for you is one that I
inherited from Our Lady, who told me nearly a year ago that --
now it seems like I am just making sound
and you are making silence,
whereas somehow I had imagined we would
collaborate on something, now it's like
drum and a scene that doesn't exist
scenesterism is the enemy anyway
or so we seemed to agree at la societe' du the', yesterday
me and my pal who was sitting with me
What kind of collaboration is that really?
except: when I dream i swear to god i dream
about filing cabinets not
a con-man
and a magician, and the con-man's daughter
and the magician's mentor; his dead brother;
and his ex-girlfriend.
not white mans burned of
amprehension of swaying side to sade
quality what is is is is jaz session of nothing besides
sincronicity of touch and these
keyboards say too much
entities of linguistic salty thought
and entities of closed-eyes FRUITFLYES
something begins salty tasting everything lyes:
YOU CAN GET THIS ANYWHERE
AT ANY BISTRO
("Lucy"? "Mary Jane"?)
if you want to fuck
someone over, please know: MY ASSHOLE IS YOURS!
But in return I ask
SILENCE
can therefore enthusiastically report that there is absolutely
nothing whatsoever for you to worry about from my quarter ever,
period, the end, DOUBLY DOUBTED, since it is both satirical and written
under the influence of TWO shots of Wild Turkey and a glass of
TWO-hearted ale, as well as one bar-back of HaMM's.
"That which is enscribed on paper is not the same as that
which is spoken with the flesh."
(FYI: this is to be lighted with a sunbeam.)
Good-bye for the time being and good-morning Vietnam,
I am yours in Christ,
Joseph Angus Corneli
--
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