{burroughs} – Page 17 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 25

A commemorative Borges coin.

He says, “Two aesthetics exist: the passive aesthetic of mirrors and the active aesthetic of prisms. Guided by the former, art turns into a copy of the environment’s objectivity or the individual’s psychic history.” There, of course, he sums up all of realism, no? “Guided by the latter, art is redeemed, makes the world into its instrument and forges, beyond spatial and temporal prisons, a personal vision.” That’s Borges.

• The Borges Behind the Fiction: Colin Marshall talks to translator Suzanne Jill Levine. Related: The Garden of Forking Paths.

• From The Quietus: Blondie in Conversation with William S. Burroughs by Victor Bockris, 1979; An Interview with Laurie Anderson by Robert Barry, 2010.

In 962 Abd-er Rahman III was succeeded by his son Al-Hakim. Owing to the peace which the Christians of Cordova then enjoyed […] the citizens of Cordova, Arabs, Christians, and Jews, enjoyed so high a degree of literary culture that the city was known as the New Athens. From all quarters came students eager to drink at its founts of knowledge. Among the men afterwards famous who studied at Cordova were the scholarly monk Gerbert, destined to sit on the Chair of Peter as Sylvester II (999–1003), the Jewish rabbis Moses and Maimonides, and the famous Spanish-Arabian commentator on Aristotle, Averroes.

Entry for The Diocese of Cordova from The Catholic Encyclopedia (1917).

• Professor Newt’s Distorted History Lesson. A riposte to the ignorance of the wretched Gingrich. Related: the Mezquita de Córdoba.

Jorge Luis Borges and a cat. Via.

• Joseph and His Friend—A Story of Pennsylvania (1870) by Bayard Taylor, America’s first (?) gay novel. Related: 20 classic works of gay literature.

• Elegies For Angels, Punks and Raging Queens at the Shaw Theatre, London, from 10–28 August 2010.

• Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony is released later this month. Café Kaput’s first release, Electronic Music in the Classroom by DD Denham, appears in September.

• “Just relax and enjoy it.” k-punk on the ambition and vision of David Rudkin’s Artemis 81.

• Chris Watson explores Alan Lamb’s The Wires: three audio recordings to download.

• Jonathan Barnbrook: Tuxedomoon fan, 1988, and Tuxedomoon designer, 2007.

• Rob Young’s Electric Eden reviewed by Michel Faber.

• Brian Eno gets the Warp factor.

• No Tears (1978) by Tuxedomoon; Atomic (1979) by Blondie; Everything You Want (1980) by Tuxedomoon; Next One Is Real (1984) by Minimal Compact; Hologram (2010) by These New Puritans.

• Franco Maria Ricci creates the world’s largest maze. “The former publisher said he first confided his ambition to Jorge Luis Borges, who characteristically told him the world’s largest maze already existed and was called a desert.” Related: Mirror, Mask, Labyrinth, a review of two new collections of Borges’ poetry.

• FACT mix 164 is a dubstep collection by Pinch and a promotion for the Dark Matter compilation which I designed earlier this year.

• One of the monuments of 20th century music, Bitches Brew by Miles Davis, is released in another new (and expensive) edition next month by Sony. Nice packaging, and there’s a vinyl edition included, but these things always come across as a cyncial attempt to milk the hardcore fans one more time. And have you noticed how all vinyl releases are now described as “audiophile”? If the big record companies had shown this much dedication to quality in the 1980s when they were jobbing out sub-standard vinyl pressings their reputation might be slightly higher today.

• More Gysin: Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, and the secret life of a building on the Bowery. And Ubuweb’s page of Gysin sound works and recordings.

• Michael Moorcock: “I think I preferred my own imagination”. A two-part interview about the cover designs for Moorcock books.

• The Pansy Project: “Artist Paul Harfleet plants pansies at the site of homophobic abuse, he finds the nearest source of soil to where the incident occurred and generally without civic permission plants one unmarked pansy. The flower is then photographed in its location and posted on his website, the image is entitled after the abuse … The Pansy Project also marks locations where people have been killed as a result of homophobic attack”

• This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities. Jim Rossignol’s book is available as a free download.

• Lost London. Also, the Victorian Catacombs of South London.

• Dedalus Books had its Arts Council grant reinstated.

• ’Zine Lutefisk: fashion/art/escape.

• Time Will Show The Wiser (1968) by Fairport Convention | She Moves Through The Fair (1969) by Fairport Convention | She Moved Through The Fair (1994) by Jam Nation.

Brion Gysin let the mice in

Brion Gysin—autoportrait (1935).

“A shaman to me is always a pansexual being,” says the gay Canadian filmmaker. “These guys all came out of that period where queer was really hardcore, it was part of their radical art — and of course it was illegal.” (more)

The filmmaker in question is Nik Sheehan discussing FLicKeR, his 2007 documentary about artist and writer Brion Gysin. Sheehan’s film is available for viewing at Ubuweb although I haven’t got round to watching it yet so I can’t say much about it. (Reality Studio has a review.) Gysin’s life and work is certainly worthy of study, however, his art and writing—which encompassed novels and experimental poetry—often having been overshadowed by his close association with William Burroughs. He gets a raw deal in Ted Morgan’s curiously bad-tempered biography of Burroughs, for example, despite having given his co-conspirator the cut-up technique, collaborated with him on The Third Mind, and so on. FLicKeR‘s title refers to Gysin’s Dreamachine, the first sculpture which needs to be experienced with the eyes closed, being a homemade hallucination engine which works by flickering light and shadow at a rapid rate on the closed eyelids. I made some Dreamachines of my own in the mid-1980s by carefully studying photos in RE/Search #4/5, and they certainly do work. It’s a shame that 78rpm record players are more difficult to find than they used to be since the original template devised by Gysin and Ian Sommerville needs a high speed in order to create the optimum flicker rate. As you might expect, various psychonauts have since created their own variations such as this one for a 45rpm player.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that the New Museum in NYC is staging the first US retrospective of Gysin’s work, an exhibition which they happen to call Dream Machine, and which opens on July 7th. The New York Times ran a piece about Gysin in advance of that. Ubuweb has further Gysin materials, such as this Burroughs piece about Gysin’s invention of the cut-up method, and some recordings of the permutated poems. Finally, if you’re wondering about the title of the post, it’s a reference to this.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Burroughs: The Movie
• William S Burroughs: A Man Within
• Emil Cadoo
• The Great God Pan
• The Final Academy
• William Burroughs book covers
• Towers Open Fire

Weekend links 19

Peafile (2006) by Shawn Smith; plywood, ink, acrylic paint.

• Surreal Friends, an exhibition of work by Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Kati Horna at the Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK. Related: The surrealist muses who roared, Leonora Carrington and other women Surrealists profiled.

• Landscapes From a Dream: How the Art of David Pelham Captured the Essence of JG Ballard’s Early Fiction. A graphic design essay at Ballardian.

• “(T)he significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe — at any rate for short periods — that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue. (…) It is the most violently combative sports, football and boxing, that have spread the widest. There cannot be much doubt that the whole thing is bound up with the rise of nationalism — that is, with the lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in terms of competitive prestige.” The Sporting Spirit by George Orwell, December 1945.

• One of my cult pop albums from the 1980s, A Secret Wish by Propaganda, is reissued in a 25th anniversary edition next month. I no doubt have most of the bonus tracks already but the prospect is still irresistible.

• Tangier Cut-Up, an uncollected piece by William Burroughs from Esquire, September 1964.

• Ghostwriter — The Continuing Adventures Of The Strange Sound Association.

• Faust And Last And Always: Germany’s Most Radical Rock Group Talk.

• Hollingsville at Resonance FM. Related: Graphic Design on the Radio.

• iPad Publishing No Savior for Small Press, LGBT Comics Creators.

• The Largest Oil Spills in History, 1901 to Present.

• 1948 Buick Streamliner by Norman E Timbs.

• Neville Brody’s work on display in Tokyo.

• Dr Mabuse (1984) by Propaganda; Vladek Sheybal, cowled monks, Fritz Lang references and Anton Corbijn directing.

Weekend links 16

Sumer Is Icumen In but you wouldn’t have known it today, it being cold and wet, O my brothers. The picture above is the work of David Owen whose Ink Corporation does a splendid job of updating the iconography of the folk music world. Via Electric Eden.

• Biting the hand that feeds: designer Jonathan Barnbrook’s contribution to the Biennale of Sydney takes a dig at the whole enterprise. The art market is impervious to criticism (or shame) but the gesture is an amusing one.

• Emanuel Schongut’s book covers of the 1960s and 1970s on the artist’s own Flickr pages. Via A Journey Round My Skull.

• Owen Freeman on illustrating William Burroughs. Related: Reality Studio interviews Victor Bockris.

• RIP Jack Birkett, Derek Jarman’s Caliban and the Pope in Caravaggio. And RIP Dennis Hopper, actor, director and photographer.

“Sea Nettle” (1873), a costume design by the Mistick Krewe of Comus. From this BibliOdyssey posting of New Orleans Mardi Gras designs.

• Chris Summerfield’s surfer boys at Lulu.

• Homotography also has a Tumblr page.

• The Ghost Box Study Series Singles.

• More 3D projection on buildings.

• John Foxx interviewed at FACT.

Song of the week: Ineffect (1989) by Material.

Category: {burroughs}

Weekend links 25

Weekend links 21

Brion Gysin let the mice in

Weekend links 19

Weekend links 16