The Radical Cut-Up Reader: No Single Narrative
The Radical Cut-Up Master of Fine Arts and Design program directed by
Lukas Feireiss at Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam examined the topical
phenomenon of the cut-up as the contemporary mode of creativity and
dominant global model of cultural production today. Assembled from
photocopies of the Radical Cut-Up Master theses, the book at hand is a
cut-up in its own right. With various professional, personal and
cultural backgrounds and experiences working in a diverse range of
media, participants in the Radical Cut-Up program were encouraged to
actively investigate the epistemological surplus of the cut-up, which
here serves as a container for a long list of terms and actions, as a
disruptive cultural and
narrative tool that extends and reinterprets preceding storylines and
embraces – rather than avoids – contradiction. Against this backdrop,
the participants had the explicit prerogative to combine, create and
copy and challenge each other to question deeply entrenched, classical
notions of aesthetic purity, originality and autonomy.