Literary Cut-ups
The cut-up technique is a literary technique based on chance operations in which a text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text.
In the 1920's Tristan Tzara, future founder of the dada movement, attended a surrealist rally where he proceeded to create a poem using a chance operation: he literally pulled letters out of hat. Like almost every one time member of the surrealist movement, Tzara was kicked out of surrealism by founder Andre Breton.
While talking about painter the cut-up newspaper article arrangements by 1950's painter Brion Gysin, William S. Burroghs says,
" The cut-up method brings to writers the collage, which has been used by painters for fifty years. And used by the moving and still camera...The best writing seems to be done almost by accident but writers until the cut-up method was made explicit— all writing is in fact cut ups"Cut-ups simultaneously enact and expose the inherent ego involved in creativity - especially in language. As a social material, language belongs to anyone and everyone. The genius associated with individual lexicons and syntactical innovation is rendered useless and laughable in a cut-up. Language is undressed and ruptured into the strange, mysterious signs they began as. In the style of Burrough's I will now perform a cut-up of this introduction to serve as an example of the method: Writing surrealist used almost up has cut-up s. all writing syntactical especially brion cut-up anyone social cut to rearranged creativity a is to is and burroghs used is he introduction involved to about used and simultaneously tzara lexicons signs and sense letters being out method of done says, writers camera...the a the belongs writing the the being individual the began the cut to tristan brings of enact is william in he of be still the burroghs create be member mysterious mysterious based writing surrealism anyone lexicons text. in by this the almost on brion will almost an to tzara using genius tzara, technique pulled