Sunday, September 16, 2007

William Burroughs cut ups

Interview with Burroughs combined with images from some of his experimental short films. This is especially useful for his clear explanation of his method and intentions (well, less on intentions) in his cutup works. When he aligns cutups with collage, and near the end Allen Ginsberg comments on cutups as well.

2 comments:

trumanwater said...

this post in conjunction w/ the legion of rock stars post reminded of a thought i've been carrying around for awhile...

the experimental techniques of the avant-garde are mostly seen as corrupt by mainstream society...yet given 10 or so years they begin to crop in up popular media, most often comedy, where they become "cutting-edge humor"...

take the last "backwards in time" episode of Seinfeld, or what LRS are doing to Danzig and Steve Vai videos...

all that suffering experimental artists live through to survive eventually turns into comedy gold...

i wonder how they feel about that?

Gary Lain said...

trumanwater,

As per the processes of recuperation you are describing, see the theft of Goddard's jump cut (esp. "Breathless") by MTV directors ad infinitum.

One might also ask these vid directors themselves what gives them license to rip off this and other carefully considered and hard won avante devices in the service of their contrived mystiques de jour.