Making use of the Cut-Up technique, I cut up Danger I & Danger III
Photographs by Brion Gysin. Paris, October 1959.

Cut-up the past and the future will leak out
the art of literally cutting up text and images in random fashion
and then reassembling them to form new, unexpected patterns.

By doing so, one could destabilize language, perception,
and reality and get closer to the truth.

I am junk and I am hooked forever.
I am reality and I am hooked, on, reality.
That is, I need a human host.
(William S. Burroughs, Cut Ups & Excerpts)

To and for all our collaborators
at all times third minds everywhere.
W.S.B. & B.G.

Photograph by Brion Gysin. Paris, October 1959.

The Cut Up Method, Brion Gysin & Burroughs

Central to William S. Burroughs’ life, art, writing, and worldview was the Cut-Up, a technique created by his collaborator and partner in art crime Brion Gysin from the earlier dada experiments of Tristan Tzara.

At a surrealist rally in the 1920s Tristan Tzara the man from nowhere proposed to create a poem on the spot by pulling words out of a hat. A riot ensued wrecked the theater. André Breton expelled Tristan Tzara from the movement and grounded the cut-ups on the Freudian couch. The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs

One of the most defining relationships in Modern Underground Art History is between Brion Gysin and William S Burroughs. Burroughs and Gysin met while staying at the ‘Beat Hotel’ in Paris 1958, during the composition of Naked Lunch. Gysin introduced Burroughs to the cut-up technique which would define his output for the remainder of his life.

Cut-ups are the art of literally cutting up text and images in random fashion and then reassembling them to form new, unexpected patterns. From pasting together texts and images from differing contexts, cutting out and rearranging individual words, incorporating news articles with classic literature, and splicing together audio, by doing so, Burroughs felt that he could destabilize language and get closer to the truth. Burroughs saw the cut-up as a means of exposing the ideologies implicit in ordered narratives while offering insights into the mysterious. Burroughs stated that Gysin ‘the only man that I’ve ever respected in my life’.

In The Third Mind published in 1978, written in collaboration with Burroughs and Gysin shared the late evolution of Naked Lunch and the innovation of the cut-up technique used to construct the novel:

‘William Burroughs and I first went into techniques of writing, together, back in room #15 of the Beat Hotel during the cold Paris spring of 1958. Naked Lunch manuscript of every age and condition floated around the hermetically sealed room as Burroughs, thrashing about in an ectoplasmic cloud of smoke, ranted through the gargantuan roles of Doc Benway, A. J., Clem & Jody and hundreds of others he never had time to ram through the typewriter. “Am I an octopus?” he used to whine as he shuffled through shoals of typescript with all tentacles waving in the undersea atmosphere.

While cutting a mount for a drawing in room #15, I sliced through a pile of newspapers with my Stanley blade and thought of what I had said to Burroughs some six months earlier about he necessity for turning painters’ techniques directly into writing. I picked up the raw words and began to piece together texts that later appeared as “First Cut-Ups” in “Minutes to Go.” At the time I thought them hilariously funny and hysterically meaningful. I laughed so hard my neighbors thought I’d flipped. I hope you may discover this unusual pleasure for yourselves—this shortlived but unique intoxication. Cut up this page you are reading and see what happens. See what I say as well as hear it.’

This chaos technique allowed Burroughs and Gysin to see into the source code of reality, which has been the quest of shaman and alchemists for centuries. Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Genesis P Orridge and the writer William Gibson also adopted this technique —in fact, the cut-up has been used by countless thousands of artists of all persuasions inorder to spark creativity when they hit a wall.

Burroughs on the Method:

The method is simple. Here is one way to do it. Take a page. Like this page. Now cut down the middle and cross the middle. You have four sections: 1 2 3 4 . . . one two three four. Now rearrange the sections placing section four with section one and section two with section three. And you have a new page. Sometimes it says much the same thing. Sometimes something quite different—cutting up political speeches is an interesting exercise—in any case you will find that it says something and something quite definite. Take any poet or writer you fancy. Here, say, or poems you have read over many times. The words have lost meaning and life through years of repetition. Now take the poem and type out selected passages. Fill a page with excerpts. Now cut the page. You have a new poem. As many poems as you like. As many Shakespeare Rimbaud poems as you like. Tristan Tzara said: “Poetry is for everyone.” And André Breton called him a cop and expelled him from the movement. Say it again: “Poetry is for everyone.” Poetry is a place and it is free to all cut up Rimbaud and you are in Rimbaude is a Rimbaud poem cut up.

Showing Up Late To My Naked Lunch

I still remember when I first got exposed to William S Burroughs. I was getting stone at my best friend's house, senior year of high school and his older brother was watching a movie. I had a sudden shock of the weird, this film was beyond bizarre, psychologically creepy and too strange for my young stone mind. This film was called Naked Lunch. In a stone daze, I said something like ‘what the fuck is this Nate?’

Now I didn’t know this at the time, but looking back Nate would play the role of Burroughs to me, as Burroughs played to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, he said

“Nake Lunch!”

“What the fuck?!?!”

“Ever heard of William S. Burroughs?”

“Nope”

“Fuck, I got some books for you to read.”

And pretty much everything that shaped my young mind in this time period went like this. Nate would say have you heard of this writer or artist, I would say No, then he would say you got to check this out. Giving me all the art/media that my young mind could handle.

William S. Burroughs’ personal biography – his drug use, his shooting of his wife , his friendship with the Beats, his homosexual relationships – is of such dramatic interest that his creative output is routinely overlooked or relegated to the shadows.

Burroughs was one of the 20th century’s pre-eminent shamans and spent a lifetime experimenting with obscure techniques for altering consciousness, from writing one of the first western accounts of Ayahuasca in The Yage Letters or being "systems adviser" of The Dreamachine. His elder statesmen role with the counterculture of the 1960s, and with the punk movement that followed. Beyond the language of his texts, I was interested in his experimental methods of composition, in his artworks.

In an Interview, Burroughs said something that still plagues my mind

I don't know about where fiction ordinarily directs itself, but I 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. I do a lot of exercises in what I call time travel, in taking coordinates, such as what I photographed on the train, what I was thinking about at the time, what I was reading and what I wrote; all of this to see how completely I can project myself back to that one point in time. Excerpt from The Third Mind

As I struggle with my dreams, reality, mind, perception, Burroughs gave me one of my first techniques to try to make sense of this reality sandwich.

Cut-Up at The Beat Hotel

As you can tell by now I had some fun and made use of the Cut-Up technique. All the images in this blog were made by cutting up Photographs by Brion Gysin. Paris, October 1959.

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

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

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