The Radical Cut-Up (RCU) programme critically examines and joyfully celebrates the emergence and evolution of the cut-up as a contemporary mode of creativity and a dominant global model of cultural production in the early twenty-first century.

Against the backdrop of the accelerated growth of new digital technologies that expand the production and circulation of images, text, sound, and objects in contemporary life, the interdisciplinary temporary Master’s thereby draws on a broader definition of the term ‘cut-up’ as a mixture or fusion of disparate elements, or the art of carefully crafted juxtaposition. Within the context of this course, the term is a container for a long list of names and actions, which describes the mixing and reconfiguration of existing materials to produce new outcomes.

The interdisciplinary programme no longer regards the artwork as an endpoint but a simple moment in an infinite chain of contributions. It embraces the ‘ecstasy of influences’ (Jonathan Lethem), refuses any form of ‘source-hypocrisy’ and boldly accepts all ideas as secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources.

Following an experimental approach to the interdisciplinary nature of cultural production today, Radical Cut-Up unites theory and practice by providing a new perspective in the contemporary educational landscape. Drawing on a broad and inclusive range of media – photography, video, architecture, film, sculpture, dance, theatre, poetry, literature, graphic design, industrial design, drawing, painting, animation, digital media, illustration and fashion design – the Temporary Programme embraces new methodologies for the future of education: interdisciplinarity, collaboration and co-production. Radical Cut-Up is based on a cooperative learning approach in which all participants interact with each other to facilitate individual as well as collective artistic development by capitalising on one another’s resources and skills. Beyond disciplinary boundaries and conventional pedagogical models, the programme adopts the principles of cut-up not only as its conceptual and methodological foundations but applies them directly by questioning the classical format of an institutionalised art school.

Radical Cut-Up explores new forms of teaching and learning by bringing together practitioners from all over the world. In 2018, the course will work in collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Not in New York, Rotterdam and Lodown Magazine Berlin. Radical Cut-Up (RCU) is a continuation and a disruption of the former temporary material-based programmes Material Utopias (MU) and Materialisation in Art and Design (MAD).

For more information please contact Antoinette Vonder Mühll via rcu@sandberg.nl

Website: www.radicalcutup.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/radicalcutup
Instagram: @radicalcutup