I am Reality and I am Hooked, on, Invisible Art (Cut Up Process #1)

The beginning is also the end

Cut Up Method, I've come to free the images
I am reality and I am hooked, on, reality.
That is, I need a human host.

I am reality and I am hooked, on, reality.
Give me an image and a knife and I can, by God,
sit, cut up and remix there forever.

Because I am the reality and
I am the dream.

But I need someone to cut up and
look at the image and remix the image

That is, I need a human host
I can’t look at anything
I can't cut up anything
I am disembodied.
I can’t sit anywhere.
I have nothing to sit on.

Calling all reactive agents
Calling all digital agents
Calling all cosmic agents

We Are the agents
I've come to free the dream

I am reality and I am hooked, on, reality.
That is, I need a human host.
Cut Up Method, I've come to free the images
(Cut-Ups, Fragments & Excerpts)

I don't think it's any great mystery but I been obsessed with the Cut-Up method. Earlier in the week, I went back and revisit William Burroughs & Brion Gysin works and essays on the Cut-Up Method. I first got Introduced to it in my late teens, and then experiment with it on some of my poetry and collage art, all of which I kept to myself.

As I went about my life, this method just became apart of my process of just consuming art/media. I would write down notes, cut up images, sample audio, visuals, and beats. It's just something I like to do.

Last week I was relistening to Genesis P Orridge on Douglas Rushkoff's Team Human and Gen said 'Is this why we still think the cut-up is a powerful tool'. This re-sparked my interesting, something was poking at my mind to go back to Burroughs and Gysin. I'm glad I did because in The Third Mind Burroughs talks about:

am quite deliberately addressing myself to the whole area of what we call dreams. Precisely what is a dream? A certain juxtaposition of word and image. I've recently done a lot of experiments with scrapbooks. I'll read in the newspaper something that reminds me of or has relation to something I've written. I'll cut out the picture or article and paste it in a scrapbook beside the words from my book. Or I'll be walking down the street and I'll suddenly see a scene from my book and I'll photograph it and put it in a scrapbook. I've found that when preparing a page, I'll almost invariably dream that night something relating to this juxtaposition of word and image. In other words, I've been interested in precisely how word and image get around on very, very complex association lines.

And this is my same process. It kind of developed unconsciously this way over the years.

A few years ago Douglas Rushkoff was the first 'professional' person I share my remix and cutups. I knew it would be alright, but I just emailed him to make sure. I was at a digital conference with him once, so I reach out to him and said hey I do these lil videos, and I sample your audio from Team Human, I hope its cool. He response was instant and was 'these are really cool'. It was a great feedback loop, and keep me pressing forward on and perhaps pushed me to share my lil cut-up projects with people.

Which brings me back to last night, I been working on stuff and cutting up everything. I went to sleep and had this dream which gave me the idea for this post.

As Burroughs kind says Dreams are Cut-Ups. I use the phrase Dreams are the defragging of the Mind. Its in Dreams that the Mind regroups like information together. It does this by cutting up information(memories) and pasting it together with like data groups.

Last night I had this dream in which Douglas Rushkoff and My Mom(who is a principle) are talking about technology and teaching in a digital culture. And am having this argument with my 'girlfriend' and she was sorry about saying something about a collage I was working on, and just before I woke up, there was this image and then words fading in and out, on top of it.

I spent all morning playing and cutting up this image to try to express what I experience last night. The words and Images of the beginning of the post, is probably as close as I can get. Here is some of my process on how I got there.

Original Collage, Published August 31, 2016

Cut #1

Cut #2

Cut #3

Cut #4

This is the basic Cutting and Mirroring that I do, to see if anything speaks to me.

Cut #5

The am start grouping the cutups

Cut #6

Cut #7

Cut #8

Cut #9

Cut #10

As things ferment and start to take shape I figure I should add W.S.B, as my tip of my Hat to him.

Cut #11

Cut #12

Cut #13

As in the last recall of my dream, I start to fade in the words.

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Also, check out my other work that has been in this recent creative vibe:

Psychedelic Sundays: The Yage Letters

William Burroughs’ Junkie ended with Yage may be the final fix. In letters to Allen Ginsberg, a young poet in New York at the time, recorded his journey to the Amazon jungle, detailing vividly incidents of a search for Yagé — the common name for Ayahuasca, or Banisteripsis Caape — the fabled “soul-rebooting” hallucinogen of the Amazon region treated as a traditional spiritual medicine and usually consumed in shaman-led ceremonies. Author and recipient of these letters met again in New York, Christmas 1953, and edited the writings to form this single book, The Yage Letters. The correspondence contains the first seeds of the later Burroughs' bizarre fantasy style in Naked Lunch.

Cut Up Utopism & Confuse the Algorithms

Gen's brings up this is why we still think the cut-up is such a powerful tool and it is that moment I knew I would have to cut up that audio and play around with it and see what happens. This is that edit.

I am reality and I am hooked on reality (cut-up song)

I am junk and I am hooked forever.
I am reality and I am hooked, on, reality.
That is, I need a human host.
Cut Up Method, I've come to free the words

I've come to free the words(cut-up song)

Poets are supposed to Liberate the words
not to chain them in phrases
Poets are supposed to sing
and make the words sing
This is a cut-up song,
Making use of the Cut-Up technique,
I cut up Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, Edgar Allan Poe

Invisible Art(cut-up song)

That is, I need a human host.
I can’t look at anything.
I am blind.
I can’t sit anywhere.
I have nothing to sit on.
translating the connections
between words and images
time in images, with the inner voice silent
Making use of the Cut-Up technique,
I cut up William Burroughs, Edgar Allan Poe

The Cut Up Method & Invisible Art

Brion Gysin Explains The Cut-Up Method and then I have fun Cut-Up his and William S Burroughs Words and Images:
Poets are supposed to liberate the words
Poets are meant to sing and make words sings
No poets don't own words
I've come to free the words