In this episode, we explore the art, and magic, of collage. From musical sampling and physical collage to literature, visual art, and montage, collage touches every part of creativity.

What happens when we place different materials in conversation with each other? How can we create (or see) something new?

And what if this approach to art making could carry over into life? Does our perspective shift if anything we encounter can become part of something larger — something more creative?

Episode Resources & Easter Eggs:

A Sample of Sampling

• A sample definition.
• Coldplay meets Frank Ocean in Strawberry Swing.
• Collage can be a Gangsta’s Paradise or, maybe you just want to Sing for the Moment.

Into the Stacks

• Check out a definitive argument for collage in Reality Hunger.
• Read The Brothers Karamazov, a giant Russian novel.
• Compare narrative notes with Bolano’s 2666.
• Impact meets inventive form in Long Soldier’s Whereas.
• Match the references and allusions in The Wasteland to their original source material (+4).
• Memoir meets criticism in Nelson’s The Argonauts.
• A fragmentary Greek poem gets a new life in Carson’s Autobiography of Red.
• Whitehead explores New York through collage (+10 to collage a city of your own).
• Read Cortazar’s Hopscotch while playing the famed game (+2).
• Metacommentary and footnotes abound in House of Leaves (but you got this, don’t worry).
• Read Naked Lunch…while naked having lunch? (don’t send pics. Some things should be kept to yourself.)
• Laugh your way to buy Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.
• Collage rebranded as a literary puzzle in Diaz’s Trust.
• The internet is rewiring our brains. Find out more in Carr’s The Shallows.

General Collage Knowledge

• Fridge magnet poems = the cut up method, rebranded.
• Is hypertext the future?

A Mini Art Rabbit Hole

• When a child’s first words are not Ma Ma but Dada.
• Comic books winning Pulitzers? That’s Pop Art energy.
• Ever looked at a urinal and thought: art? Marcel Duchamp did.

Click the links above to explore the magic.

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