why I like experimenting with cut up

by Bennie

Posted to Utterances on 2004-02-20 04:43:00

There have been a few posts recently <----or more recently,

about the good the bad and the ugly re. cutups.

I use the offline version of this when experimenting.

I like the idea of fucking with the principle usage of language, i.e to communicate.

Communication through language is possible because there are rules. I’m not an English teacher/major/anything so I can’t go into them in detail. But there are some things we all know, use and appreciate.

Full stop at end of sentances
Capital letter at beginning
comma when you introduce a new subject or whatever.

But why should this be the case?

Take art. There are many paintings that just “don’t make sense”

Dada
Surrealism
Abstract
Cubism
and many more [I’m not an art teacher/major/anything]

BUt they look great and even though they don’t seem to mean anything literal you can still appreciate them.

There are clues:

texture
colour
angles
symolism
light/dark

these allow us to get into the head of the artist.

killer Bennie-ism coming up:
Tell Picasso that people don’t look like that? Well, if you know it’s supposed to be a person, what’s the problem?

And that’s my thought about cutup. If it looks like a piece of text, then it is. The meaning is there, follow the clues:

the words
the images

okay, you can write words and images without the use of a cutup machine, or a manual cutup, and it’ll make more literal sense too.

So if you remove all these constraints, the constraints that help to make text understood, what you’re left with is a series of words that you’ve written. A series of words that came from you.

Okay, they’re in the “wrong” order and they don’t make “sense” but why not? The words are still there.

I’m just mumbling ranting etc. Didn’t really think this through before hand. Don’t think much through anyway, except myself.

I just think it’s a nice way for writers to get a bit of that artist action.

If they can make a human face blue with three ears and a square mouth why can’t I have a piece of text that reads:

I of mountain tops.
I jumped at the rugged
complexion on the make
for a more initial meaning
and I like that they remove chance
before too long using cutups.

or:
before too long I jumped at the chance of using cutups. I like that they remove initial meaning and make for a more rugged complexion on the mountain tops.