Cut-Up Transmediality: From Text to Image

Abstract

This chapter explores the visual aspects of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s “cut-up” project as specifically “transmedial,” rather than “intermedial” by critically examining their exploration of this largely aleatory collage technique. Their later shift from applying it to text to other media, including sound and film, can be seen as a fascinatingly prescient sojourn into what would later become transmedia storytelling. By drawing on theories ranging from recent studies on trans- and intermediality to theoretical works by Paul Ricoeur and Roland Barthes, the chapter will offer a theoretical framework for approaching the cut-ups as part of a wider aegis of resistance to conventionalities while considering how the transmediality of the cut-up project has implications for its disruption of language and time. This chapter will also expand the field and open up new areas for analysis.