Cut it out & cut it up

This week I shared with a Studio Co!Lab what I've learned using the Cut-Up Technique

To begin my talk I encouraged everyone to print a copy of Picasso's poem about noon, since he's known to have stated that artists steal and it feels right to honour this contemporary of Cut-ups.

My Cut-up experiences have been realised in lyrics, sampling and also a book that invites destruction.

I also mentioned the poetry reading that I gave at a book launch which performed a live remix.

We began cutting Picasso's poem into individual words while I explained how the imagery reminded me of the Riverina and introduced David Bowie's use of the technique.

The singer acknowledged his debt to Brion Gysin and echoed some of the magical attributes he promoted with a process pioneered earlier in the 20th Century by Tristan Tzara.

My recollection is Cut-ups were a significant development in the split between Surrealism and Dada, when Tzara created a "manifesto" using newspaper clippings.

At the time the Surrealists were writing manifestoes and took offence at this brute process for generating words.

However, the cut-ups have been seen to share in common the influence of Freud's ideas of dream analysis as a way of identifying cues from the unconscious.

Cut-up documents interrogate the text in a haphazard manner that reveals as much about the dynamics and relationships of the reader, while allowing anyone to be an author. 

In this way it shows a Dadaist antiestablishment attitude that can be seen as an attack on authorial intention.

Some might view the process as reassembling a document and the process can be viewed through a variety of philosophical positions, such as the magic and art roles.

When you begin creating a cut-up text there are decisions about the process that determine roles for chance or probability.

You might choose to draw a word from a hat, or you might assemble them from a visible pool of possible words.

My partner developed an exhibition that referenced William S. Burroughs' use of the Cut-up Technique in 2014 and that year introduced me to an alternate approach proposed by the Disquiet Junto.

While the process of preparing the pieces and then pasting them together has a meditative quality that suits gallery spaces that are open for more of a performance art aesthetic, the simplicity of the idea is ripe for technology.

It is interesting to see David Bowie returned to the idea as personal computing developed with the Verbasizer, which has been beautifully realised at this website.

The idea of cutting seems simple and it's worth remembering that many ideas about editing have developed since Tzara.

When you cut up a text the words are never entirely anonymous, even if the document become a palette for beige language.

Each discrete piece becomes a springboard for a chain of connotations, which is a process that has been called "unlimited semiosis" in semiotic theory.

These become potent symbols and through the popularisation by Gysin the cut-up practice came to be infused with ideas of magic that were researched by Genesis P-Orridge.

Burroughs undertook audio and film-based cut-ups that extended the ideas he identified in literary practice.

I explained an audio-based curse that P-Orridge detailed and how sampling harnesses a similar energy when it takes a small example from a larger whole.

Working with the landscape as a document to sample you find inspiration in selecting small symbolic examples to trigger memories of entire ecosystems.

Which l led into my discussion of my Soundscaping videos and exhibitions.

Using video as a medium for cut-ups led to the role of Arthur Lipsett's 21-87 in the development of Star Wars.

I pondered religious implications as well as broader philosophical questions of free will and determinism.

There were some questions towards the end, including some discussion of AI and machine-learning tools.

I talked about my collaborative poetry, where I fed lines about the environment into a website.

It offered results that were surprising in a way similar to cut-ups but overcame a key constraint.

The responses from AI saw angels, which was delightful and language that I never use.

So the AI experiment gave a nice counterpoint to the Cut-up Technique and Andrew, the moderator, decided that was the moment to end.

Avant gardening

Here I am performing poetry “with an avant garde twist”

It involved remixing one of the poems in the book being launched, by using the cut-up technique.

I recorded this version of the piece the following day:

Photo by Neil McAliece.

Advance Australia unfairly

A recent Disquiet Junto project gave me an idea to use the cut-up technique on the national anthem

My oldest, Oscar, sings in the choir at school, so I knew he'd provide the raw material for this edit.

My partner Jo joked that I might get arrested for butchering the national anthem and it's a contentious song for me anyway, since the second verse is at odds with Australia's offshore detention policies.

I think it was William S. Burroughs who thought the Cut-up technique revealed hidden meanings in text, and it seems to me the Australian national anthem has language which seems to 'dog-whistle' the white Australia policies of earlier eras.

Anyway, my result is unmusical and I tried singing the new arrangement to the existing melody, which improved it but seemed at odds with the Junto directions.

GEO//GRAPHOLOGY

One of the highlights of Burning Seed this year was seeing Red Earth Ecology establish itself on the paddock

Jo’s been developing this project for years, undertaking activities around Matong and introducing Burners to the local ecology.

I’ve seen the crowds for her bush walks grow and in that time she’s been joined by a number of people with expertise — particularly Brian Jones, Ash Blackwell, Diego Bonetto and Peter Ingram.

There’s a good level of interest from visitors wanting to know more about the environment in Matong State Forest and many years have seen additional walks added to the program.

This year we were awed to see around 60 people show up for the walk.

It was also exciting to see Jo’s art project start to take shape this year, after she struggled last year before being taken off site in an ambulance.

GEO//GRAPHOLOGY uses the Cut-up Technique to reveal hidden meaning from local histories and, as someone who has worked as a curator at a local museum, I feel there is a need for a fresh perspective in this area.

Orwell famously wrote that “history is written by the winners” and it’s increasingly clear to me that reconciliation in Australia will require a truth-telling, much like the hearings that took place in post-apartheid South Africa.

It’s desperately overdue as more Australians identify as Aboriginal.

Jo has been using the Cut-up Technique in local exhibitions for a number of years and it suits her conceptual approach to art-making.

It’s a great way to review and reinterpret historical narratives, hopefully prompting a reevaluation of meanings drawn from records — which at times used euphemisms to hide the extent of the Frontier Wars in the Riverina.

That’s a small part of a much bigger picture but an important one given the Wiradjuri drove almost all the Europeans out of the area west of Ganmain in the mid 19th Century.

Jo's activity of selecting fragments from histories and pasting them together is a social one.

Really enjoyed being part of the conversations and making art with friends.

Looking forward to seeing Red Earth Ecology continue to develop on and off the paddock.

An We -- cut-up poetry

Observe the result of moving around the words in half of a famous Australian poem

Cut-up animation with Terry Gilliam

Picasso cut-up

(fe)manifesto

My partner produced this interactive artwork for the Reconstructing exhibition that's currently at the HR Gallop Gallery at Charles Sturt University's Wagga Wagga Campus.

Visitors are invited to glue on lines from a famous feminist texts, using the cut-up method to create a manifesto.

Burroughs adding machine

Over a century ago Burroughs were the biggest name in 'adding machines'. These days they're better known for the grandson of their inventor, author William S. Burroughs, who was one of the most "culturally influential and innovative artists of the 20th century".

The family fortune ensured he received a Harvard education but activities like heroin and homosexuality led him to associate with Beat Generation writers and '60s counterculture, while collaborations with bands like Nirvana showed his continuing influence up to his death in 1997.

The 'cut-up' technique made popular by Burroughs remains potent, with musicians like Beck and Radiohead using it to great effect. Pretty cool story for a calculator, hey? Gave me a thrill when I found one at Griffith Pioneer Park Museum.

Cut-up poetry

William S Burroughs would've been 100 this week and the Disquiet Junto got me to make a song using the lead story from the local newspaper as lyrics.

My partner Jo has been making cut-up poetry for a few months, inspired by the originator of the form: Tristan Tzara. Apparently he was kicked out of the Surrealists for thinking he could compose a better poem automatically and, as a result, started the Dadaists.

Today I had a go, with mixed results. It's quite exciting the way the juxtapositions force your brain to make sense from random combinations of words. Burroughs thought the process could be a magical ritual, revealing hidden meaning. I like his idea of audio being used the same way to cast curses by intercutting 'bad' sounds into a recording, such as his example of closing a restaurant he didn't like by recording them and then adding police sirens and screams. It's a kind of remixing.

Call Me Burroughs records a quasi-magical revenge attack on a Boulder deli from which two of his opiated friends had recently been thrown out. First, Burroughs arranged for a surreptitious tape recording to be made inside the deli—ambient noise, kitchen clatter, waitress-customer banter—and then, days later, with equal surreptitiousness, he played it back from a cassette recorder inside his coat as he sat at one of the tables. As Miles writes: “Over the next hour he increased the volume so that you could just about hear it, but no one appeared to notice.” Yet subliminal damage was being inflicted: discontinuous time streams, information feedback. “After forty-five minutes … one of the waiters threw down his apron and stalked out, followed by the owner, arguing loudly. The owner returned and began to scream at the serving staff, sending two of the women running to the ladies’ room in tears.” Burroughs, psychic vandal, was 63 years old at the time of this incident.