In 1959, painter Brion Gysin, a close friend and collaborator of William S. Burroughs, discovered a montage technique that produced what he called “cut-ups.”

What happened was, Gysin needed to cut some papers with a razor blade and so placed layers of newspapers on the table in order to avoid scratching up the surface. When he looked at the patterns he had accidentally created in the newspapers, he noticed that the sliced-up text and images offered interesting juxtapositions. He soon produced a book called Minutes to Go with Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and the South African poet Sinclair Beiles that employed the concept.

Burroughs pushed the cut-up idea further, speculating that the technique could reveal the “true” meaning of a given text and flirting wth the notion that cut-ups could yield key information about the future, saying, “When you cut into the present the future leaks out.”
 

Brion Gysin
 
Recently, David Dawson put up a sale (not an auction) on the Irish version of eBay featuring “a group of 5 photographs related to the Cut-Ups.” In 1982 Dawson co-founded, with Roger Ely and Genesis P-Orridge, the Final Academy celebration of Burroughs’ work held over several days in London and Manchester, which included appearances by Burroughs, Gysin, John Giorno, and others.

The prints come from negatives in the archive of Anthony Balch, who among other things once filmed Burroughs purchasing a parrot, which led to Genesis P-Orridge finding the discarded footage after Balch’s death and then editing it for the Final Academy event mentioned above.

The lot costs £125 (about $175).
 

 

 

 

 
via Exile on Moan Street
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Time of the Assassins’: William S. Burroughs’ cut-up version of Time Magazine, 1965
William S. Burroughs buys a parrot, 1963