cut-up technique

British  

noun

1. a technique of writing involving cutting up lines or pages of prose and rearranging these fragments, popularized by the novelist William Burroughs (1914–97)

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Example Sentences

Handwritten lyrics for songs like “Fame,” Heroes” and “Ashes to Ashes” will also be on display, including examples of Bowie’s cut-up technique.

From New York Times

Somebody once tracked the route taken in the song and concluded that Morrison must have deployed William Burroughs’ cut-up technique on his road map, but such literalism misses the point.

From The Guardian

Samuel Beckett once said of the Cut-Up technique of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin “That’s not writing, it’s plumbing”—a prescient remark now that we have a means of writing that really is like plumbing: lay the pipes, the tank, the cut-off valves, and then open the taps and leave the room.

From Scientific American

Photograph: Eliot Elisofon, 1970/Courtesy of the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian William Burroughs created new work with the "cut-up" technique, creating new meaning out of found words – much the way Duchamp did with urinals.

From The Guardian

A page of what appears to be Bowie's own journal, from January 1975, offers a tantalising glimpse of the day-to-day life that Bowie has spent four decades successfully shielding from public view, or would if it made any sense: as it is, it's hard to work out if the fractured prose bears testament to Bowie's use of the cut-up technique he borrowed from William Burroughs or just the vast amounts of drugs he was taking at the time.

From The Guardian