Radical cut-up: nothing is original

Abstract

This volume investigates the cut-up as a contemporary mode of creativity and important global model of cultural production. The term cut-up serves as an open container for a long list of terms and actions that describe the combination and reassembly of existing motifs, fragments, images, and ideas from diverse and disconnected origins into newly synthesized entities. Refusing any disciplinary coherence, this book assembles texts from multifarious eras and origins. At the same time, the contributors share an urgency to question the dichotomy of original creation and derivative appropriation. In this way the book itself is a cut-up of previously published essays and articles that in their proximity allow for multiple readings to arise. It aims to translate the topic into a wider societal discourse to serve as both a source of inspiration and a platform for critical reflection.

Contents

Radical Cut-Up : Nothing Is Original / Lukas Feireiss -- Postproduction : Culture as Screenplay : How Art Reprograms the World / Nicolas Bourriaud -- Thou Shall Not Steal ... But You Will Be Taught to Copy / Robert Shore -- The Ecstasy of Influence : A Plagiarism / Jonathan Lethem -- The Writer as Scavenger : Queer Interventions in Teaching and Writing / Stacey Waite -- Living with Ghosts : From Appropriation to Invocation in Contemporary Art / Jan Verwoert -- Depropriation / Marcus Boon -- Postcolonial Piracy / Lars Eckstein -- Surgeon, Seamster, Sorcerer : The Embodied Practice of Collage / Tamar Shafrir -- Re-versioning the Elements of Selectivity : Transformation and Originality after Remix / Eduardo Navas -- Loops of Perception : Sampling, Memory, and the Semantic Web / Paul D. Miller a.k.a DJ Spooky -- Cognitive Remix (Reediting the Polymath) / Rachel Falconer -- The Big Flat Now / Thom Bettridge, Joerg Koch, and Lucas Mascatello -- Radical Cut-Up Alumni -- Adam Bletchly -- Lou Buche & Javier Rodriguez -- Daan Couzijn -- Rebecca Eskilsson -- Zsofia Kollar -- Wesley Mapes -- Juliana Maurer -- Barnaby Monk (Herbert Luciole) -- Alex Murray -- Fabian Reichle -- Fenna Schilling -- Farida Sedoc -- Anthony Smyrski -- Agustina Woodgate -- Authors -- Glossary -- Colophon.