Cuts, Wounds, Slits: Mapping a Theory of the Cut
This tutorial proposes to investigate the cut as an interdisciplinary or (traveling) concept. We shall read and research texts ranging from Michel Foucault to Gilles Deleuze and Georges Didi-Huberman, and research objects that can help us think the cut as a contemporary concept.
Imagine together Gordon Matta-Clark’s slicing of a suburban bungalow in New Jersey (Splitting, 1974), Henri Matisse’s late coloured-paper collages, Yoko Ono’s 1964 Cut Piece performance, Peter Eisenman’ House III (1970) and Hannah Hoch’s photomontage satire of Weimar Germany (Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands) (1919-1920); the laser cut fashion of Azzedine Alaia and Ikea’s flat-pack furniture. These objects, works or projects, picked out from different places and times all share a common feature: they result from, perform, or visualise cuts: They cut open, cut off, cut into, and cut up, using a gesture that is as ubiquitous as it is charged with significations: doors ‘cutting out a part from the continuity and infinitude of space’, in the writings of Georg Simmel, divide the world like borders do, while Gina Pane’s razor cuts in her body during public performances are about opening up the self to the other. Maurice Blanchot observed this elsewhere when he evoked the necessity of cutting one’s speech to let the other respond and thus make dialogue possible. While it is tempting to see the cut as a marker of modernity when we see Jean-Luc Godard resorting to jump cuts in A bout de souffle, it is, equally, a cultural marker for Roland Barthes who pits the chopstick that delicately hugs the food morsel against the knife that brutally cuts it. Types of cuts change also in time: the laser cutting on a flat surface replaces the gesture of the tailor who cuts fabric on a mannequin. Does the laser cut still enact the timeless ‘blinding imperialism’ of the tool cutting into matter that Gaston Bachelard once reflected upon?
In analysing different enactments and theorizations of cuts, the tutorial seeks to explore the cultural significance of this gesture in an era of economic transformation that sees cuts performed everywhere and all the time. If Gilles Deleuze could write a philosophy of the Fold to identify, through Leibniz and Baroque architecture, aspects of a ‘modern neo-Baroque’, how can a theory of the Cut helps us understand our contemporary changing world?
The tutorial is open to one or more students. We will decide on the first readings together and then search for objects and other theoretical material. Assignments to be discussed. The tutorial will begin in week 12. Date and place to be specified. Sessions with be every three-weeks.
Contact: Sophie Berrebi, berrebi@uva.nl