O HAI, Have You Heard Paper Cut?

Mod Mobilian sat down (in the digital sense) with local artist Elizabet Eliot about her new project PaperCut.

How Did Paper Cut come about?

I’m not sure how Paper Cut came about. it seems Adam (Taylor) and i had the same strange dream one night and the next day Paper Cut existed. as only a thought maybe, but organic, like waking up with a new mole, you know it belongs to you.

Do you consider Paper Cut to  be sitting on the HipHop branch of the music tree? If not, where would you say it fits in?

Paper Cut is an interdisciplinary performance art and sound collaboration that straddles genre. Hip hop specific is easy because we borrow modes and structures from hip hop. paper cut actually sits between genres. if you take the pieces apart they belong to other jurisdictions. Hip hop relates in that its current rhizomatic growth pattern facilitates the free play and function of narrative overlapping. We take the methodology of hip hop and apply it to other genres, we are punk, we are poet, we are theater. That isn’t to say hip hop doesn’t already apply to those genres. It does which is exactly why it is a useful term for out effort.

Can you let us in on the process behind creating a Papercut song?

Paper Cut fleshes out the role storyteller as a hybrid and multifaceted performance of identity. Using analog media including four slide projectors, hand-built machines for sound and light play, and found objects to many ends creates a visual and audio narrative that is immersive. It is a tall tale told to music; a limerick in light. Paper cut is a sound, a vision in the night, an idea at close range.

We have a system. it is blind first. i record stories on a Dictaphone. i send adam electronic files. i wait to hear from him. he sends a reshaping. a sound play to my natural pacing. he finds the beat. i marry it, send new files. we talk on the phone about npr and football. we talk about the state of sound. then we try to see. we organize and arrange images on whatever surface is available. we play with the structure built between our efforts, and apply light.

See Paper Cut at the second Psychedelic Night at the Blind Mule

Featuring:

-Legba!

-Paper Cut!

-Cpt. Nemo’s Psychedelic Allstars! feat. members of Swamp Wompus, Port Wine Stain, Pirates of the Caribbean

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