The Cut Ups (1966 film)

in #film5 years ago (edited)

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Cut-ups slightly modified by modern means
I've come to free the visuals
I am reality and I am hooked, on, reality.
I can’t look at anything. I am blind.
That is, I need a human host.

In I am reality and I am hooked on reality (Visual Cut-Up), I take William Burroughs’ and Anthony Balch’S 1966 Experimental Film ‘CUT UPS’, and take the technique one step further, Cut-ups slightly modified by modern means.

Brion Gysin said, "By slicing into messages of mass-dissemination from newspapers, film or audio- tape, mind-bending coincidences emerge that otherwise would have remained invisible." I have been taking his advice and using William S Burroughs as a muse lately. But I think this 1966 film needs to be highlighted and give a deeper look.

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A COMPLETE DISORIENTATION OF THE SENSES: WILLIAM BURROUGHS’ AND ANTONY BALCH’S ‘CUT UPS’

Central to William S. Burroughs’ and Brion Gysin's life, art and worldview was the Cut-Up, a technique created by his friend and collaborator Brion Gysin from the earlier dada experiments of Tristan Tzara. Burroughs felt by using the Cut-Up method he could destabilize language and get closer to the truth. This technique allowed Burroughs and Gysin (they felt) to see into the source code of reality. If you cut into the present the future leaks out, as Burroughs like to say.

Filmmaker Antony Balch had a knack of making friends with the right people at the right time. In Paris, he met and hung out with artist Brion Gysin. Through him, Balch met the two men who changed his life, Burroughs and Kenneth Anger.

Burroughs offered Balch the opportunity to collaborate and make their own films. This they did, first with Towers Open Fire, an accessible montage of Burroughs’ routines, recorded on a Grundig tape recorder, cut-up to Balch’s filmed and found images of a “crumbling society.”

But it was their second collaboration, Cut Ups which for me is far more interesting and proved far more controversial. Cut Ups was originally intended as a documentary called Guerilla Conditions and was filmed between 1961 and 1965 in Tangiers and Paris. It included some footage from Balch’s failed attempt to film the unfilmable Naked Lunch. The finished material was collected and then conventionally edited. The process didn’t stop there, for Balch divided the finished film into four sections of equal length, and then:

...assembled into its final state by taking one-foot lengths from each of the four sections that were cut together with mathematical precision — 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4 etc. Variations to this structure occur randomly when a shot change occurs within one of the already edited one-foot lengths.

Balch faced very difficult grading problems. “Twenty minutes with one change every foot was just too much, what we did was to have a graded fine-grain print made of the edited sequences and then chop up the fine grain and make a dupe negative from it, so the film prints at one light.” The film was cut into exact lengths by none of the actual artists. “The actual chopping was done by a lady who was employed to take a foot from each roll and join them up. A purely mechanical thing, nobody was exercising any artistic judgment at all.

The idea was to achieve an effect akin to Burroughs cut-up technique and cause a complete disorientation of the senses. This was aided by an audio track created by Burroughs, Gysin and Ian Somerville, which consisted of mind-numbing permutations of just four phrases: “Yes, Hello?”, “Look at that picture,” “Does it seem to be persisting?”, and “Good. Thank you.”

When all put together, the film achieved its intended effect, as Roy Underhill, assistant manager at the Cinephone told Balch during the film’s initial run:

...during the performances an unusual number of strange articles such as bags, pants, shoes, and coats were left behind, lost property, probably out of complete disorientation.

It caused nausea and vomiting when first shown at the Cinephone, Oxford Street, in London. Some of the audience demanded their money back, others hurled abuse and shouted “That’s sick,” and “Its disgusting.” This was the idea, as writer William Burroughs and producer, Antony Balch wanted to achieve a complete “disorientation of the senses.”

With Caution check out Burroughs and Balch’s strange experimental 1966 film 'The Cut Ups':


1966, UK, 18' 45", Black & White
Cinematography: Antony Balch
Screenplay: William S. Burroughs
Cast: William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin



Images: Clips from the film that are Cut Up and Remixed by SatoriD


Also, check out my other work that has been in this recent creative vibe:

I am Reality and I am Hooked, on, Invisible Art (Cut Up Process #1)

Cut Up Method, I've come to free the images
I am reality and I am hooked, on, reality.
That is, I need a human host.
I am reality and I am hooked, on, reality.
Give me an image and a knife and I can, by God,
sit, cut up and remix there forever.

Cut Up Photographs at the Beat Hotel Part 1 (Cut Up Process #2)

A WAY TO CUT THROUGH THE STRAITJACKET OF PERCEPTION
THE ART OF THE CUT UP
Mind-bending coincidences CUT THROUGH
THE STRAITJACKET OF coincidences
A WAY TO emerge THROUGH visual LANGUAGE
Calling all reactive agents
Calling all digital agents
Calling all cosmic agents

The Cut Up Method & Invisible Art

Brion Gysin Explains The Cut-Up Method and then I have fun Cut-Up his and William S Burroughs Words and Images:
Poets are supposed to liberate the words
Poets are meant to sing and make words sings
No poets don't own words
I've come to free the words

Psychedelic Sundays: The Yage Letters

William Burroughs’ Junkie ended with Yage may be the final fix. In letters to Allen Ginsberg, a young poet in New York at the time, recorded his journey to the Amazon jungle, detailing vividly incidents of a search for Yagé — the common name for Ayahuasca, or Banisteripsis Caape — the fabled “soul-rebooting” hallucinogen of the Amazon region treated as a traditional spiritual medicine and usually consumed in shaman-led ceremonies. Author and recipient of these letters met again in New York, Christmas 1953, and edited the writings to form this single book, The Yage Letters. The correspondence contains the first seeds of the later Burroughs' bizarre fantasy style in Naked Lunch.

I am reality and I am hooked on reality (visual cut-up)

I am junk and I am hooked forever.
I am reality and I am hooked, on, reality.
That is, I need a human host.
Cut Up Method, I've come to free the words

I've come to free the words(cut-up song)

Poets are supposed to Liberate the words
not to chain them in phrases
Poets are supposed to sing
and make the words sing
This is a cut-up song,
Making use of the Cut-Up technique,
I cut up Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, Edgar Allan Poe

Silky Supple Mirrors to be folded(cut-up song)

Poets are supposed to liberate the words Poets are meant to sing and make words sings No poets don't own words I've come to free the words
Cut Up and Remix of Brion Gysin and William S Burroughs spoken word.

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