“The cut-up is actually closer to the facts of perception than representational painting. Take a walk down a city street and put down what you have just seen on canvas. You have seen a person cut in two by a car, bits and pieces of street signs and advertisements, reflections from shop windows – a montage of fragments. Writing is still confined to the representational straitjacket of the novel … consciousness is a cut up. Every time you walk down the street or look out of the window, your stream of consciousness is cut by random factors.”
William S. Burroughs
The cutup – a juxtaposing physical method of cutting/splicing and pasting image, sound and word, like a film or a newspaper article, letter, book or even audio tapes; one literally applies scissors to media and cuts into pieces, then pastes them back together at random.
A simple exercise in this is to take a page, any page: a letter, a written political speech (most interesting results), a page out of a book, and cut it in half. Now turn the page(s) and cut them again through the middle, or in thirds, quarters, whatever. You can do this as much as you’d like. Then rearrange the pieces into one page again and read it. Sometimes it will say relatively the same thing- sometimes something very different. The point is to experiment and use the technique to unravel the Word, see behind the curtain at what is hidden behind our symbols. Cut-ups overwhelm what is “known” and predictable; logic and senses become deranged and new dimensions are discovered.
Example cut-up from previous paragraph:
this is to take a page, a written (most interesting results), a page and cut it in half. Now cut them middle, or political speech in thirds, turn the page(s) and hidden behind quarters, whatever. You can do this. A deranged and discovered simple exercise in Then rearrange the pieces into one page again and read what is “known”. Sometimes it will say relatively the same thing- sometimes new dimensions are something very different. The point is any page: again through the a letter, to experiment and use the technique to unravel the and it Word, see behind the curtain at what is as much as you’d like our symbols. Cut-ups overwhelm predictable; logic and out of a book, senses become.
Posted by Modus Operandi 
