William Burroughs 100 - Nova Convention - The Red Gallery, London

Genteel Death · 05.29.2014, 08:39 AM

01 July 2014 - 12 July 2014
This exhibition of over forty original photographs and special selections of rare ephemera from The Nova Convention (1978) celebrates and honours the legendary beat author and artist William Burroughs on the occasion of his centennial.
This show has been curated by musician Thurston Moore and artist Eva Prinz to include candid photos of Burroughs together with his inner circle of radical friends and colleagues of artists, writers, musicians, dancers, such as Patti Smith, John Cage, Frank Zappa, Terry Southern, John Giorno, Laurie Anderson, Anne Waldman, Merce Cunningham and others.
A limited edition catalogue of the exhibition published by Ecstatic Peace Library will be available for purchase exclusively at the Red Gallery during the exhibition.
Photographs & Ephemera curated by Thurston Moore & Eva Prinz
http://www.redgallerylondon.com/exhi...ion/2014-07-01

dead_battery · 05.29.2014, 08:48 AM

strongly feel that burroughs the author has been totally lost under the weight of burroughs the reference dropped by sy, nirvana etc.

all thats ever talked about is his drug taking and wild man exploits, which was the boring stuff he did.

as usual mark fisher gets it:

http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/004218.html

MEN ARE FROM VENUS
delights.jpg

'Death is orgasm is rebirth is death is their unsanitary Venusian gimmick is the whole birth death cycle of action - you got it?' - Ticket that Exploded, 53

Reading Burroughs' The Ticket that Exploded, you experience the same creepy tingle as when you encounter the raw intensity of Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle, or any of Lacan's commentaries on it. Impossibly (help, someone call the transcendental cops), you are confronting something that you should not (be able to) see... Somehow, against all the odds, elements from within Human OS have got outside the system to expose the real nature of its hideous construction...

In The Ticket that Exploded, all that is solid from within the Human OS Death-Pleasuredome dissolves back into the body melting shamanoneiric deliria of pure intensity (oneiric - but is not we who dream, it is we who are dreamt - but by WHOM? or WHAT? -- come and look, if you really want to know the answer...)

--- it seems almost trivializing to describe The Ticket that Exploded as something that you read. It's more a question of attunement to an ongoing intensive trauma, to the cosmic hell-industrilalization process.

The prose is incantatory ---- and it is a mistake to read it as if it is a novel. Hear it as if it is being read out aloud. Use the hyphens (---) as precise instructions on how to pause ---

But only plug yrself into the book-machine if you really want to know what you are --- few do ---

'The Venusian invasion was known as 'Operation Other Half,' that is, a parasitic invasion of the sexual area taking advantage of an already existing fucked up stituation. ('What a mess'...) - The human organism is literally consisting of two halves from the beginning word and all human sex is this unsanitary arrangement whereby two entities attempt to occupy the same three-dimensional co-ordinate points giving rise to the sordid latrine brawls which have characterized a planet based on 'the Word', that is, on separate flesh engaged in endless sexual conflict - The Venusian Boy-Girls under Jonny Yen took over the Other Half, imposing a sexual blockade on the planet - (It will readily be understandable that a program of systematic frustration was necessary in order to sell this crock of sewage as Immortality, the Garden of Delights, and love - (51-52)

goya.jpg

'Well these are the whole facts of the case and i guess i ought to know - There were at least two parasites one sexual the other cerebral working together the way that parasite will - that is the cerebral parasite kept you from wising up to the sexual parasite ....' (144)

You see gentlemen you have been engineered solely as a carrier for Venusian pleasure death sex plague. Everything else about you is an accidental side-effect...

No male sex drive, then, (I was speaking too loosely when I said that before).. no... only males driven to pass on the evil sexdeath virus that pulsates and wriggles within us, seeking release, which is to say more of itself, forever...

dead_battery · 05.29.2014, 08:50 AM

sordid latrine brawls

!@#$%! · 05.29.2014, 08:50 AM

I am getting sexy, come three times last night. The Italian school is just opposite, and I stand for hours watching the boys with my 8-power field glasses. Curious feeling of projecting myself, like I was standing over there with the boys, invisible earthbound ghost, torn with disembodied lust. They wear shorts, and I can see the goose pimples on their legs in the chill of the morning, count the hairs. Did I ever tell you about the time Marv and I paid two Arab kids sixty cents to watch them screw each other—we demanded semen too, no half-assed screwing. So I asked Marv: “Do you think they will do it?” and he says: “I think so. They are hungry.” They did it. Made me feel sorta like a dirty old man…

dead_battery · 05.29.2014, 08:51 AM

i know i know... and there are even worse passages in queer...

he really was a despicable bastard. and a trust fund junkie.

!@#$%! · 05.29.2014, 08:57 AM

that was from a letter he wrote to ginsberg though-- it's not from a novel that one could say "oh, that's just the character speaking." that was him being him.

dead_battery · 05.29.2014, 09:09 AM

queer is pretty much really him, and its just as bad if not worse.

cant defend him.

still a great writer.

!@#$%! · 05.29.2014, 09:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dead_battery

cant defend him.

still a great writer.

yes. i don't really like his writing much(i don't really like a lot of writing these days anyway, so i don't blame him), but i like what he thought about writing. some good stuff here:

http://archive.org/stream/WilliamS.B...f63e9_djvu.txt

e.g.

There's - wait a minute while I find it here - there's a famous line, oh here we are, yes.
For years Dryden held undisputed title to the most atrocious conceit in the English
language for his breathtaking lines on Lord Hastings Smallpox. "Each little pimple had a
tear in it to raise to wale the fault it rising did commit". And now Dryden must defend
his title against Papa Hemmingway. "The hole in his forehead where the bullet went in
was about the size of a pencil. The hole in the back of his head where the bullet came
out was the size of a was big enough to put your fist in it if it was a small fist and you
wanted to put it there." Oh boy!

05.29.2014, 08:39 AM	#1
Genteel Death invito al cielo Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 8,744	01 July 2014 - 12 July 2014 This exhibition of over forty original photographs and special selections of rare ephemera from The Nova Convention (1978) celebrates and honours the legendary beat author and artist William Burroughs on the occasion of his centennial. This show has been curated by musician Thurston Moore and artist Eva Prinz to include candid photos of Burroughs together with his inner circle of radical friends and colleagues of artists, writers, musicians, dancers, such as Patti Smith, John Cage, Frank Zappa, Terry Southern, John Giorno, Laurie Anderson, Anne Waldman, Merce Cunningham and others. A limited edition catalogue of the exhibition published by Ecstatic Peace Library will be available for purchase exclusively at the Red Gallery during the exhibition. Photographs & Ephemera curated by Thurston Moore & Eva Prinz http://www.redgallerylondon.com/exhi...ion/2014-07-01
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05.29.2014, 08:48 AM	#2
dead_battery expwy. to yr skull Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 1,928	strongly feel that burroughs the author has been totally lost under the weight of burroughs the reference dropped by sy, nirvana etc. all thats ever talked about is his drug taking and wild man exploits, which was the boring stuff he did. as usual mark fisher gets it: http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/004218.html MEN ARE FROM VENUS delights.jpg 'Death is orgasm is rebirth is death is their unsanitary Venusian gimmick is the whole birth death cycle of action - you got it?' - Ticket that Exploded, 53 Reading Burroughs' The Ticket that Exploded, you experience the same creepy tingle as when you encounter the raw intensity of Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle, or any of Lacan's commentaries on it. Impossibly (help, someone call the transcendental cops), you are confronting something that you should not (be able to) see... Somehow, against all the odds, elements from within Human OS have got outside the system to expose the real nature of its hideous construction... In The Ticket that Exploded, all that is solid from within the Human OS Death-Pleasuredome dissolves back into the body melting shamanoneiric deliria of pure intensity (oneiric - but is not we who dream, it is we who are dreamt - but by WHOM? or WHAT? -- come and look, if you really want to know the answer...) --- it seems almost trivializing to describe The Ticket that Exploded as something that you read. It's more a question of attunement to an ongoing intensive trauma, to the cosmic hell-industrilalization process. The prose is incantatory ---- and it is a mistake to read it as if it is a novel. Hear it as if it is being read out aloud. Use the hyphens (---) as precise instructions on how to pause --- But only plug yrself into the book-machine if you really want to know what you are --- few do --- 'The Venusian invasion was known as 'Operation Other Half,' that is, a parasitic invasion of the sexual area taking advantage of an already existing fucked up stituation. ('What a mess'...) - The human organism is literally consisting of two halves from the beginning word and all human sex is this unsanitary arrangement whereby two entities attempt to occupy the same three-dimensional co-ordinate points giving rise to the sordid latrine brawls which have characterized a planet based on 'the Word', that is, on separate flesh engaged in endless sexual conflict - The Venusian Boy-Girls under Jonny Yen took over the Other Half, imposing a sexual blockade on the planet - (It will readily be understandable that a program of systematic frustration was necessary in order to sell this crock of sewage as Immortality, the Garden of Delights, and love - (51-52) goya.jpg 'Well these are the whole facts of the case and i guess i ought to know - There were at least two parasites one sexual the other cerebral working together the way that parasite will - that is the cerebral parasite kept you from wising up to the sexual parasite ....' (144) You see gentlemen you have been engineered solely as a carrier for Venusian pleasure death sex plague. Everything else about you is an accidental side-effect... No male sex drive, then, (I was speaking too loosely when I said that before).. no... only males driven to pass on the evil sexdeath virus that pulsates and wriggles within us, seeking release, which is to say more of itself, forever...
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

05.29.2014, 08:50 AM	#3
dead_battery expwy. to yr skull Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 1,928	sordid latrine brawls
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

05.29.2014, 08:50 AM	#4
!@#$%! invito al cielo Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: mars attacks Posts: 42,564	I am getting sexy, come three times last night. The Italian school is just opposite, and I stand for hours watching the boys with my 8-power field glasses. Curious feeling of projecting myself, like I was standing over there with the boys, invisible earthbound ghost, torn with disembodied lust. They wear shorts, and I can see the goose pimples on their legs in the chill of the morning, count the hairs. Did I ever tell you about the time Marv and I paid two Arab kids sixty cents to watch them screw each other—we demanded semen too, no half-assed screwing. So I asked Marv: “Do you think they will do it?” and he says: “I think so. They are hungry.” They did it. Made me feel sorta like a dirty old man…
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

05.29.2014, 08:51 AM	#5
dead_battery expwy. to yr skull Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 1,928	i know i know... and there are even worse passages in queer... he really was a despicable bastard. and a trust fund junkie.
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

05.29.2014, 08:57 AM	#6
!@#$%! invito al cielo Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: mars attacks Posts: 42,564	that was from a letter he wrote to ginsberg though-- it's not from a novel that one could say "oh, that's just the character speaking." that was him being him.
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

05.29.2014, 09:09 AM	#7
dead_battery expwy. to yr skull Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 1,928	queer is pretty much really him, and its just as bad if not worse. cant defend him. still a great writer.
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