Abstract

This volume investigates the cut-up as a contemporary mode of creativity and important global model of cultural production. The term cut-up serves as an open container for a long list of terms and actions that describe the combination and reassembly of existing motifs, fragments, images, and ideas from diverse and disconnected origins into newly synthesized entities. Refusing any disciplinary coherence, this book assembles texts from multifarious eras and origins. At the same time, the contributors share an urgency to question the dichotomy of original creation and derivative appropriation. In this way the book itself is a cut-up of previously published essays and articles that in their proximity allow for multiple readings to arise. It aims to translate the topic into a wider societal discourse to serve as both a source of inspiration and a platform for critical reflection.