Brand Power
Traced back to the Dadaists, the cut-up technique began as a literary technique in which a written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. Seen as both a form of divinization and a tool to reveal our unconscious, it was hypothesized by Brion Gysin & William S. Burroughs that such a technique could be used to discover the true meaning of a given text. Could this technique also be applied to physical objects or semiotics?
Brands act as contemporary power objects, empowering, enslaving, creating believers, and essentially establishing tribes with collective shared values. Cutting up, collapsing, while forcing collisions, Scottie Burgess considers the manipulation of visual language that pervades our culture as a means to reflect on the human condition and intent of contemporary power structures. As William S. Burroughs told Bryer P-Orridge, “Let’s cut it up and see what it really says.”