CutUp
CutUp is an anonymous collective of artists based in East London, who intervene into channels of media/advertising as a tactic to introduce elements of disquiet into the urban everyday. Influenced by the ideas of Walter Benjamin and later the Situationists whereby the street becomes a stage for intervention or creative activity, their work incorporates collage, film and sound installation, and focuses largely on disrupting and reconfiguring pre-existing systems within the urban environment.
“Our definition of play is to deliberately break the rules and invent our own, thus freeing creative activity from restrictions, to redesign aesthetic and revolutionary actions that undermine or elude social control.”(CutUp, 2006)
For Desire’s Smoking Gun CutUp have literally cut up and rearranged an advertising billboard outside the gallery to communicate an altogether different message, one of gritty realism as opposed to the idealised images depicted on commercial hoardings.
