CLASSIFICATION
Swallow ID:
6184
Partner Institution:
Simon Fraser University
Source Collection Label:
Reading in BC Collection
Sub Series:
Reading in BC Collection
ITEM DESCRIPTION
Title:
William Burroughs Reading at the Western Front, [1975?] #293
Title Source:
cassette and j-card
Language:
English
Production Context:
Documentary recording
Genre:
Speeches: Question-and-answer period
Identifiers:
[]
Rights
Rights:
Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)
CREATORS
Name:
Burroughs, William
Dates:
1914-1997
Role:
"Speaker",
"Reader"
CONTRIBUTORS
MATERIAL DESCRIPTION
Image:
Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Cassette
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Extent:
1/8 inch
Track Configuration:
2 track
Playback Mode:
Stereo
Generations:
Second generation from Reel-to-Reel
Sound Quality:
Excellent
Physical Condition:
Excellent
Other Physical Description:
Black and white clear jewel case with J card
DIGITAL FILE DESCRIPTION
Channel Field:
Stereo
Sample Rate:
44.1 kHz
Duration:
T00:37:49
Size:
37.1 MB
Bitrate:
32 bit
Encoding:
WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files
Channel Field:
Stereo
Sample Rate:
44.1 kHz
Duration:
T00:38:03
Size:
36.8
Bitrate:
32 bit
Encoding:
WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files
Dates
Date:
[1975?]
Type:
Production Date
Source:
J-card
Date:
[1974-11-17?]
Type:
Production Date
Source:
Inventory
LOCATION
Address:
303 E 8th Ave E, Vancouver, BC V5T 1S1
Venue:
The Western Front
Latitude:
49.26391
Longitude:
-123.09869
CONTENT
Contents:
Side Track No. Comments
One 000 Opens with W.B. speaking about “the film you’ve just seen.” Speaks of Hollywood films and the discouragement of experimentation in film.
044 “Film with the customary beginning, middle and end is as arbitrary as the form of the sonnet.”
050 “This film was actually made from a quite sequential although rather cryptic and science fiction piece of detective narrative… rather than percent that we cut it up as you saw, but it could not have been directed that way…”
063 “What exactly is a cut-up and how does it differ from the assembling and editing that takes place in the cutting room of any film?”
090 “In 1959, Bryon Gysin said that writing was 50 years behind painting and applied the collage technique to writing… these first cut-ups were published in a pamphlet entitled “Minutes to go”.”
108 Asks for questions
114 Q. Does your method of cut-up have anything to do with alpha rhythms?
A. No, it was purely arbitrary…
140 “The film did produce strong reactions and many viewers were disoriented by seeing it.”
150 “The cut-ups make explicit a process that goes on all the time…”
171 Q. You seem to be preoccupied with technique… do you give much thought to content? Is that a worthwhile distinction for you?
A. Certainly… we have the original content of the film; and then the technique was, to cut that content up… the film was shot in London, Paris, New York and Tangier.
200 Q. Isn’t that an inhuman way to cut up a film?
A. Inhuman? (laughter) You’ve seen films like L’age d’or…with much less content that this film had originally… what is inhuman about experimenting with your actual medium?
220 Q. Where you just doing a physical exercise after the shooting of the film, physically playing, rather than thinking about what you sought?
224 A. Precisely…The thing is at some point arbitrary, and therefore you’re going to get something new. If you just artistically and consciously move around what you’ve already got, you’re not going to get anything new… just… your own interpretation of the material, but if you cut it arbitrarily, you’re going to get actually new images and new material…
270 Q. Does sound track cutting have any relation to phased sound, memory tapes and biocomputers…
294 A. Yes… the process you’ve just seen is going on in your minds all the time… you are shifting between the places you’ve been at very short intervals on an arbitrary basis and that basis of course is what you’re seeing at the moment…
311 Q. But when you make it explicit you’re breaking a very strong taboo… a strong visual taboo
A. Yeah. Well, the visual taboo is the sequential narrative…
340 Q. Could you explain what you were trying to do that would be beyond (the catchwords “new” and “different,” and “taboo”)? What was your object? What was your end?
355 A. Science, pure science, experimentation (applause)…
375 Q. When you made the narrative, did you at that time intend to cut it up…?
380 A. Well, of course… but we had a narrative structure…
395 Q. Why do you begin with a conventional narrative
397 A.Well, you want to have something that is approximately sequential to see what happens when you cut it up… sort of like a control experiment in a laboratory…
422 Q. What’s after collage?
A. There are all sorts of things with speed up and slow down that haven’t been done (e.g.) speed up and slow down on comparatively immobile objects or faces…
446 Q. Is this (film) your solution (to a problem) or are you going to go further?
A. Experimental films are experiments… in artistic experiments you never necessarily arrive at a definitive conclusion.
465 Q. What’s Bryon Gysin doing now?
A. He’s living in Paris and painting.
470 Q. Would you comment on the film “Performance” as a studio film… toward your point of view?
475 A.It sure did. Nicholas Roeg saw this film and Andy Balch (?) explained to him the techniques and he used some of those techniques in “Performance.”
482 Q. Can you talk about the “dream machine”? Is it easy to make?
484 A.It’s comparatively easy to make, yes. You have a cylinder with slots and… with a light that goes down into it…essentially it’s a flicker in the eyes of 8 to 13 persecond, which is the alpha rhythm. It’s a means of inducing alpha rhythms in the brain.
525 Q. Could you comment on the effects on the biologic system of witnessing cut-ups of one’s own images?
538 A.I would hope that it would have a liberating effect, liberating you from the sequential associations…see, most people, okay, their images go from here to here…they’re associational networks…Now, if you cut those up, presumably they would have some liberation from that sequential associational network in which everyone is part of…
564 Q.Is this point where you became acquainted with scientology? And the IMIR?
568 A.Well, the IMIR (?) is simply a psycho-galvanometer – it’s simply a reaction detector of which there are many…
577 Q.But observing that reaction has no liberating effect?
581 A.Well, it can have some… it’s a form of biofeedback
590 Q.What changes have you seen people go through who’ve been affected by… having their association lines cut? (by cut-ups)
596 A.I’ve seen people who… were liberated from their associational lines.
630 W.B. I think that the cut-up process goes on all the time (in thinking) and that we automatically try to make it more linear…try to fit it into a logical or linear context because of our training.
640 Q.Would you say that was a human property or a cultural thing?
647 A.Oh, cultural, absolutely cultural – because all cultures don’t do it…Our culture, western culture definitely imposes a linear context…but I don’t think that this is at all necessarily true of other cultures.
657 Q.What cultures can you think of…
659 A.I don’t think it’s nearly as true of the Arabs, I certainly don’t think it’s true of the Chinese…
665 Q.How is that exhibited in their art or in their lives?
A.It’s certainly exhibited by the Chinese in a much higher degree of equanimity.
705 Q.If that’s true, then… what in our culture does it to us?
710 A.Well, it’s our whole training from birth. You’re taught to think from here to here to here.
715 Q.For what reason?
717 A.To make you more controllable, obviously…
720 (A long exchange between questioner and W.B. over B’s intention in his books to “subvert the reader” and the reader’s susceptibility being controlled.)
856 Q.Is the cut-up a cooperative effort between yourself and this film?
A.Yes.
920 Q.Do you mean to propose that the mind works in an arbitrary way?
A. Yes…
926 Sound cuts off
Two 000 Questions talking about the western mind’s attempt to put that cut version through a sequential version.
004 W.B. Automatically they attempt to put it into a sequential version because of their training.
015 Question re/ “the difference between mind and perception, subjective and objective.” B: “There’s no difference…every time you walk down the street, you’re subjected to all these random influences, they’re cutting into your sequential stream of consciousness at random intervals
Two 027 Q.That’s true, but now you’ve spoken of a stream of consciousness and things cutting into it…we have two quasi entities.
031 A.They’re not quasi-entities at all – they’re simply a parts of the same process…
059 Q.As a writer who’s getting involved in film…do you feel that writing has reached a limitation or do you see more experimentation in writing?...
071 A.As to whether there’s any further point to which writing can go…we’ve seen the extremes to which painting went when it was shoved out of the representational position by photography…and you had collage, which was…much closer to the actual facts of perception than sequential painting…
085 Q.Did you have fun making that film?
A.Oh, yeah, sure. Lots of fun.
100 Q. re drugs and B’s philosophy.
A… I asked Jasper Johns, “what is painting all about?” and he turned to me and he said, “what’s writing all about?” and I said I didn’t know and he said he didn’t know…
160 Announcement of a break, after which W.B. reads.
168 (Burroughs reading): “Well, what is the purpose of the Pope…”
392 “This reading is from a work in progress entitled Cities of the red night and it’s entitled ‘Introduction of Virus B-we’.”
414 “Virus B-23”
724 “From ‘The wild boys”.” (“Old Sarge smiles, “ The wild boys, New York : Grove Press, 1971, p. 25)
1000 Sound ends, tape side 2 ends
Notes:
SFU BC Readings formatting
NOTES
Type:
General
Note:
William Burroughs at the Western Front (No date - 1975?) Making a non-sequential film Side 1 30:36 Side 2 7:12 Reading 24:34 Tape ran out before end of reading Dolby B
Type:
General
Note:
There are quite a number of questions asked by different people that are anonymous.
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