This workshop, inspired by the cut-up technique popularized by author William Burroughs, was one of the first workshops participated by the students who took the Media Practice II/Global Design Workshop courses in the S1 term of 2019.
Participants were told in advance to bring along a magazine that they can cut out. After they divided into groups, the facilitator asked the participants to come up with their answers to a question (“What is the University of Tokyo?”) and present their responses onto a sheet of paper by cutting and pasting the words and characters from the magazines and rearranging them. Some groups focused on discussing their responses first and then worked on the cut and paste activities, while others went through the magazine pages as they talked and clipped the phrases and characters and posted their answers. Either way, it was a process of deconstruction of the original text and an exercise to defamiliarize themselves with media.