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The political cut-up

The writer Ken Hollings examines how an artistic device called the 'cut-up' has been employed by artists and satirists to create new meanings from pre-existing recorded words. Today's digital age has allowed multi-media satirists like Cassetteboy to mock politicians online by re-editing - or cutting up - their broadcast words. But the roots of this technique go back to the late 1950s when painter Brion Gysin and his friend, the American writer William S Burroughs, began playing with audio. How has the cut-up evolved since then?

First broadcast on Cutting Up the Cut-Up, 25 June 2015.

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5 minutes

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