Cut-Up The Guardian

VIS175 Class Exhibition

February 7, 2024
1:00 - 6:00 p.m.
UpThere, Room 353, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

UpThere, a temporary exhibition space for short-run installation and mixed-media art by UCSD VIS ARTS undergraduates presents its inaugural show, Cut-Up The Guardian, Wednesday, 7 February 2024, 1:00 – 6:00 PM.

VIS ARTS Lecturer Dino Dinco asked students in his WI24 VIS 175 media class, Editing: Theory & Practice, to create experimental texts using the Cut-Up method popularized by American novelist and spoken word performer William S. Burroughs in the 1950s and 1960s (and before Burroughs, by the Romanian poet Tristan Tzara in the 1920s). Dinco asked Raymond Tran, Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian, to set aside 30 copies of the paper’s first edition of the quarter which Dinco then distributed to his students. The instructor explained the parallel of the assignment to analog film editing when physical reels of film were cut with blades and reconnected with tape as the editor sought to build sequences and create meaning.

The VIS 175 student Cut-up works exhibited UpThere, all from the same source material (minus one submission using the following week’s paper), resemble ransom notes seen in films and television shows. The experimental texts reflect diverse strategies not only for cutting and reconnecting words and phrases but working with (or against) language to achieve linguistic and narrative coherence and incoherence. Cut-up The Guardian features work by Jenna Allred, Ande Arend, Jonathan Cabael, Sam Campbell, James DeLisio, Nicoletta Gagliano, Vanessa Gee, Aretha Li, Sonia Lopez-Alvarez, Nicole Lopez, Leo Macias, Mark Martin, Mia Martin, Alexandra Mirman, Andre Nguyen, Apru Pranjal, Lauren Reyes, Alex Sandoval, Isabelle Simon, Tanner Strachan, KC Tran, Grant Wang, Ava Woodgrift, and Mona Xing.

The idea for UpThere emerged when Dinco first entered the office that the VIS ARTS department offered him in the Visual Arts Facility (VAF) at the start of the Fall 2023 quarter. Thinking of the dearth of exhibition spaces for undergraduate students to exhibit artwork, especially installation art (a favorite of Dinco’s), the largely empty office presented a perfect opportunity to exhibit a rotation of new student work.

Proposals to exhibit installation work UpThere can be submitted to Dinco by email, ddinco@ucsd.edu.

UpThere is in Room 353 of the Visual Arts Facility (VAF).