Cut-Up Technique

Disassemble and rearrange your ideas

The cut-up technique, developed by William S. Burroughs and popularized in collaboration with artist Brion Gysin, is a literary and artistic technique that involves cutting up existing texts or visual materials and rearranging them to create new compositions. It is a form of collage applied to writing.

Example

  • Take a piece of text and cut it into sentences or single words
  • Rearrange into new combinations of sentences
  • Repeat until new ideas or concepts emerge

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