ABSTRACT
The cutting up and subsequent rearranging of media forms as part of a creative or critical practice has a long material history. The expression "cut and paste" originates from manuscript and film editing, originally involving actual scissors and glue, but collage and assemblage techniques date back to the invention of paper. The actual cut-up "method" or technique, however, became most famous when adopted in the 1950s and 1960s by one of its main proponents: beat writer William Burroughs. Where the cut-up and fold-in methods as applied by Grusin and Burroughs in their various publications were subsequently popularised, their direct origin was already prevalent in surrealist and modernist avant-garde experiments of the 1920s. The kinds of media, technology, and materials people use and have access to have played an important role in the development of cut-up and cut, copy, and paste practices. Entangled with technological developments are societal structures that have simultaneously influenced the use and development of cutup practices.
