Cut-up as a magical process

burroughs

“What Bill [William S. Burroughs] explained to me then was pivotal to the unfolding of my life and art: Everything is recorded. If it is recorded, then it can be edited. If it can be edited then the order, sense, meaning and direction are as arbitrary and personal as the agenda and/or person editing. This is magick. For if we have the ability and/or choice of how things unfold—regardless of the original order and/or intention that they are recorded in—then we have control over the eventual unfolding. If reality consists of a series of parallel recordings that usually go unchallenged, then reality only remains stable and predictable until it is challenged and/or the recordings are altered, or their order challenged. These concepts led us to the realization of cut-ups as a magical process.”

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (Thee Psychick Bible)

[via]

A History of Political Remix Video (Before YouTube)

A History of Subversive Remix Video before YouTube: Thirty Political Video Mashups Made between World War II and 2005 – Curated by Jonathan McIntosh

“Filmmakers, fans, activists, artists, and media makers have been reediting television, movies, and news media for critical and political purposes since almost the very beginning of moving pictures. Over the past century, this subversive form of populist remixing has been called many things, including appropriation art, détournement, media jamming, found footage, avant-garde film, television hacking, telejusting, political remix, scratch video, vidding, outsider art, antiart, and even cultural terrorism.”

See the complete article and video collection via the Open Access online journal Transformative Works and Cultures:
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article­/view/371/299