MEMORA8ILIA

a filing cahinet for 8sided.blog

william s burroughs

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❝ The way I make my collages can provide some insight into my usual creative process. Whether it’s writing a script, making a piece of music, or shooting a film, I’m always drawn toward variations and repetitions. Very often with all of these forms, I try to place seemingly disparate elements beside one another. I always start by gathering materials for quite a long time that relate to some idea that I’m starting to form. Once I have enough of these things gathered, then I sit down and, say, write a script out of them. It’s not exactly the same procedure between each medium, but my work is definitely defined by this process of gathering before making.
[…]
I saw William Burroughs make his journals and scrapbooks while I was working on the set [of Burroughs: The Movie (1983)]. They were all cutups and a kind of re-manipulation of information, both images and words. He and Brion Gysin used these methods to construct their own texts. Seeing this firsthand impacted the way I work and, of course, the collages I’m making today. ❞ *

Jim Jarmusch on Creative Process, Early Influences, and Pandemic Inspirations

https://memora8ilia.com/index.php/2022/09/17/jim-jarmusch-on-creative-process-early/

❝ Dreamachine 1/0 is an online adaptation of that work, featuring electronics from Ben Barwise and audio reproduction by Jack Jelfs. The film is best viewed in a darkened room with the lights dimmed and the sound on. By reconfiguring the pulses of electronic light and sound waves for a digital space, Coen & Mirza recontextualize their adaptation of this historical art experiment for contemporary times. ❞ *

https://memora8ilia.com/index.php/2022/09/04/dreamachine-10-is-an-online-adaptation-of-that/

❝ The 1966 short The Cut-Ups is probably Burrough’s best-known foray into experimental film, which he made with filmmaker and renowned smut/horror distributor Antony Balch. The film features random, repetitive shots of Burroughs in New York, London and Tangiers spliced together in precise lengths but with little regard for the content of the image. The audio is a cut-up conversation with the words “Yes” and “Hello,” getting looped over and over and over again. ❞ *

https://memora8ilia.com/index.php/2022/07/17/the-1966-short-the-cut-ups-is-probably/

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❝ From this productive period came not only the cut-ups and the Dream Machine but also [Brion] Gysin’s “roller grid” prints. “Repetitive yet always featuring distinct markings,” points out University of Delaware exhibition notes, “the roller grids represented an idiosyncratic system, an irrational order, combining repetition and chance. The principle of the “rolling grid” (endless repetition with endless variation) can be seen at work in many of Gysin’s and Williams S. Burrough’s projects, including the Dream Machine.” ❞ *

https://memora8ilia.com/index.php/2022/07/12/from-this-productive-period-came-not-only-the/

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Dancing Under the Moon by The Master Musicians of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar

❝ Jajouka is the name of a hidden village in the Jebala foothills of northern Morocco. You won’t find it on any roadmap. But Jajouka is the home of the tribe Ahl Serif, sometimes translated as The Saintly, because they are descended from an Arab healer called Sidi Hamid Sheich, whose shrine the Ahl Serif hold sacred. The tribal musicians’ fame derives from their preservation of music whose origins go back to antiquity. William Burroughs called The Master Musicians of Jaouka “the four thousand year-old rock and roll band.” ❞ *

https://memora8ilia.com/index.php/2022/05/12/the-master-musicians-of-jajouka-led-by-bachir/