The Cutup....

The Cutup in the work of William S. Burroughs

“Life is a Cutup”-William S. Burroughs

 

Burroughs was introduced to the cutup technique by Brion Gysin (a painter) whilst they were staying in the Beat Hotel in Paris in 1959.The cutup technique is somewhat similar to montage techniques used in painting and structural film editing popularized by Eisenstein. “Burroughs immediately saw the similarity to the juxtaposition technique he had used in Naked Lunch (Grove Press 1959) and began extensive experimentation with text, often in collaboration with other writers”.[1]

 

The cutup is essentially a mechanical method of juxtaposition in which Burroughs literally cuts up passages of prose by himself and other writers and then pastes them back together at random. Burroughs often supplemented this literary version of the collage technique by transcribing taped cutups(several tapes spliced into each other),film cutups(montage) and mixed media experiments(results of combining tapes with television, movies, or actual events.[2] The fruition of these experiments can most clearly be seen in two avant-garde films with which he collaborated with Gysin and director Anthony Balch entitled “Towers Open Fire”(1963) and “The Cutups”(1963).

 

Cutup Theory

 

As Burroughs experimented with the Cutup technique he began to develop a theory of the Cutup and incorporated this into his pseudoscience of addiction. “Along with drugs, sex and power as examples of man’s addictive nature, Burroughs added an analysis of control over human beings exercised by language (“The Word”), time and space (i.e man’s physical existence and mental constructs he uses to survive and adapt).”[3] 

 

“In Burroughs cutup theory drugs, sex and power control the body, but “word and image locks” control the mind, that is “lock” us into conventional patterns of perceiving, thinking and speaking that determine our interactions with environment and society. The cutup is a way of exposing word and image controls and thus freeing oneself from them, an alteration of consciousness that occurs in both the writer and reader of the text”[4]

 

For Burroughs as an artist, the cutup is an impersonal method of inspiration, invention and an arrangement that redefines the work of art as a process that occurs in collaboration with others and is not the sole property of artists. Thus Burroughs cutup texts are comparable to similar contemporary experiments in other arts, such as action painting, happenings and aleatory music. His theory of the cutup also parallels avant-garde literary theory, such as structuralism and deconstruction.[5]          

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[1] Jennie Skerl, William S.Burroughs,1985,Massachusetts,G.K Hall and Company

[2] www.languageisavirus.com

 

[3]  Jennie Skerl, William S.Burroughs,1985,Massachusetts,G.K Hall and Company

[4] Ibid.

[5] www.languageisavirus.com

 

 

Cutups....

ZONE TRIPPER

 

 

 SOMETIMES I FEEL DOOMLORD OR SPACE DESERT COWBOY HEAVY METAL SEX MACHINE  ALWAYS A FUCKIN PIRATE….

 

EITHER WAY WE’RE ON MY SHIP WE ROCK THE OCEAN PSYCHEDELIC ONE-WAY TRIP A MAGIK CARPET PILOT….

 

RIDE MY SONIC WAVEFORMS DIGGIN’ SOME LOWDOWN FREQUENCIES SELF-AFFLICTED BASSLINE JUNKIE SILENCE OFFERS INSULTS NOISE ATTACKS WITH NECCESITY LOUDNESS IS SO CALM TO MAXIMUM VOLUME YIELDS MAXIMUM RESULTS….

 

THERE IS ALWAYS TIME N’ER TO WORRY GOT TO KEEP IT FOOLISH IF YOU ARE CHASING THEN YOU CANNOT KEEP UP DON’T JUST SAY IT DO IT

 

 

The Cutup

 

Heavy low-down bass line frequencies, Desert doom-lord ship, cutting through psychedelic space ocean, silence always yields a one-way fuckin’ pirate….

 A magic-carpet, sex-trip cowboy upon this volume affected metal tripper.

A junkie pilot digging the ride, noise attacks my zone, chasing sonic waveforms offering loudness which yields maximum results….

 

It is never foolish to feel calm necessity,in order to keep myself, I insult worry,either way, just keep on it…. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Original

 

An eclectic measure

Some hectic leisure

It’s electric treasure,

With narcotic pressure,

 

Nerves explode to erupt with pleasure

Rainbow space, LSD coloured nebula,

 

Always partake,

Never say never,

You cannot predict,

Heavy cosmic weather.

 

 

Version1:

 

And cut:Heavily-spaced explosion.

All with-in, hectic cosmic weather.

 

Some leisurely prediction and always rainbow-coloured LSD25,

Eclectic pleasure in other peoples leisure.

 

Some say-thee electric eclectic nebula.

Never, never cannot measure-erupt!

Nervous breakdown treasure….  

 

Version 2:

 

I-always take a heavy measure of narcotics.

LSD pressure, it erupt in electric cosmic rainbow coloured azure.

Nerves explode, nebulizing predictions…

 

Ion’s, the weather you partake.

T’is omega pleasure with narcotic pressure,

Never cannot say with never.

I-infinite space….

 

 

My friend Tom Walsh sent me some short poems so I created some cutups from them in the manner of Bowie,Burroughs and Gysin-Enjoy!x

 

 

 

To-ward thee Avant-Garde....

According to the Oxford online dictionary the definition of “avant-garde” is someone who is working with new and experimental ideas and methods in art, music and literature. Or  a group of artists, musicians or writers working with new and experimental ideas and methods. This is an accurate description of the pathway I am travelling in my artistic practice and it is with this in mind that I seek to flesh out some of my  influences  and attempt to hone the parameters of my artistic journey and workout exactly what I am actually trying to investigate within the context of my postgraduate study. 

 

 

I remember reading Kerouac’s “on the road” when I was in my mid-teens and was inspired by it’s viscerality and immediacy, from then on I always wanted to write and make art, whether it be performance, fine art or the written word.

 

In Burroughs groundbreaking first successful novel Naked Lunch (1959),named so by Kerouac,(the analogy being that you can see exactly what is on the end of your fork), Burroughs presents his humanity in the upmost honesty and is unequivocally nude. Burroughs writes in the manner of a set of routines which accurately prognosticate the instruments of control(algebra of need)that manipulate our socio/political horizon. This relates more especially to the authors constant battle with heroin addiction and the modus operandi which that implies. It is non-linear yet perfectly formed with the most beautiful poetic sense and is “savagely funny.”(newsweek)

 

 

 Since then Burroughs has always been my favourite author, his non-linear style, routines and shocking honesty about himself has always struck me as being the  best that literature can offer. The way he uses the time and space continuum as an artifice to exorcize a socio-political point, (for example in the “Cities of the Red |Night” trilogy) the inherent intelligent of his prose urges me to keep inverstigating his prose and the “novels” they are contained in. I find his cutups to be sublime and the denizen of a lot of hidden truth as to the nature of our existence,for example the uncanny merging of dream and reality. As Burroughs says in the 1991 documentary “Commisioner  of Sewers,” “Your life is a cutup.”

 

For Burroughs image and word can be substituted, for when you read a word or collection of, an image definitely pops up in your mind.The random sublimnity of these words and images makes the cutup a great tool for exorcizing the control that others have over your destiny, opens your mind and allows you to feel freely and open your mind to new ways of thinking.

 

This idea of the cutup translates well to the world of avant-garde cinema, more epecially in Burroughs and Bryon Gysins,“Towers Open Fire,” which plays with ideas of word and image control and the concept of  a “persistence of vision, ”brought about by treating the image and soundtrack as if it were a dream, the reification of the open mind if you like engaged by the opening of the pineal gland/third eye.

 

The jump-cut, montage and energizing of sign and symbol can also be seen in the cosmic artifice and occult laden work of Kenneth Anger’s “Magick Lantern Cycle”. Painstakingly created over many years and often-reworked in new editions Anger’s films use image, sign and symbol as a direct link to Jung’s “collective unconscious” and is influenced heavily by |Crowley’s Thelema, the mysteries of Hollywood and in later years the counter-culture of the late sixties.

 

In terms of avant-garde music, arguably the most surreal and groundbreaking is Captain Beefhearts 1969 double album “Trout Mask Replica.” The record has the intention of being taken as an anthropological field fecording,it is experimental and abrasive and although it sounds extremely chaotic,there is within it an extreme control and trust in this chaos, legitamized by the vision of Captain Beefheart and the tireless diligence of his magic band.

 

On the record sounds spill around, mistakes become motiff’s on cappella tracks such as “orange claw hammer” and “the dust blows forward and the dust blows back,” the recording benefit’s from the Captain(Don Van Vliet) hitting pause on the tape recorder and starting lines over again. The recording was documented and produced  by Frank Zappa on a SHURE eight-channel mixer and an UHER portable tape recorder. Many of the vocals were initiated without the use of headphones, rendering them only slightly in synch with the instrumentation.

 

To develop the album the band lived together and practiced for up to fourteen hours a day, they were so attuned to each other that when it came for the band to record it only took four and a half hours. Beefheart wrote most of the album on piano and the parts were transposed for the benefit of the magic band, learning and executing this music must have took extraordinary effort, however the recording does not sound like the work of control freaks.

 

So during this term I intend to explore the notion of word and image in relation to the avant-garde. I shall write a book which will be illustrated by my paintings and also make recordings which refer to this material in an attempt to understand the juxtaposition between word and image and how greater truths can arguably be gleaned through this juxtaposition.