Second part: Similarities and differences. Andy Warhol (visual art), Mike Jagger (music) and William Burroughs (writing)
Gautam Malkani he is a writer highly esteemed by critics and the public. His debut novel Londonstani (translated and published in Italy by Guanda) has received much appreciation and an unusual prominence for a debut work by a mestizo writer. In addition to the Financial Times Malkani writes for the New York Times and Time out. In Londonstani has experimented with a linguistic mix that closely resembles a slang mash-up blending together some of the idioms spoken in London in its diverse cultural and ethnic enclaves. As far as contimations are concerned, the London writer has a lot to say.
Find, cut and paste.
After reading this article, take a pair of scissors, cut it into pieces, then rearrange the fragments to create new paragraphs, sentences and meanings. If you're reading it online, you'll do even better: simply select portions of text, copy and re-paste.
In 1959, in a hotel room in Paris, the writer William burroughs was doing the same thing with a stack of old newspapers when he switched to mix lines of prose and poetry by Rimbaud and Shakespeare. Before long, the author of Naked Lunch [Naked meal] was using what he called the “cut-up method” to write a trilogy of experimental novels. He also used scissors with the magnetic tape, Photos e film. Imagine the work and the skin wounds that could have avoided with today's digital tools: le uses, and platforms social media which make the cut and the recombination of contents as easy as right-clicking a mouse or swiping a touchscreen.
Those familiar with Burroughs' writing will recognize it in his photography the ability to open and andspread the planes of reality — a talent fueled more by theintellectual curiosity than from his infamous penchant for narcotics.
Norman Mailer once hailed him as "the only living American novelist who today can conceivably be possessed by genius." But Burroughs' experiments far beyond the written word, with cameras and tape recorders, illustrate exactly how ambitious his cut-up project was — and also how prescient for a digital society in which the recombine it is often there standard. Widely regarded as a godfather of the counterculture, it could be argued that Burroughs was also a godfather of the digital remix cultures and today's mash-ups.
Cut-up vs. mash-up
To verify this opinion I visited Al Newman who is a DJ and remixes under the name Al Fingers. As a mash-up artist, Newman combines pre-existing audio tracks to create something that has more resonance than the sum of its parts. In the simplest case - and often the most alchemical one - it is a matter of to melt the part vocalic of a song with the music of another. For example, one of Newman's mash-ups combines Marvin Gaye's “What's Going On” with Johnny Osbourne's reggae roots. Some DJs throw dozens of tracks into a mix, others extend it practice at videos. Either way, mash-ups are one of the dominant forms di digital art to have emerged from online culture.
As we examine some of Burroughs' cut-ups and photo collages, we are blown away by theirs apparent randomness. Mash-ups, on the other hand, require a synchronicity di rhythm e tone. says Newman
“If you just cut the songs and randomly put them together it wouldn't work. It would be more of a noise than a mash-up."
Burroughs' juxtapositions are more conscious than they first appear. Many images and motifs recur in different compositions, especially in photos of family and friends. He also used strategically placed mirrors to create fragmentations itsimultaneous immetries. As Burroughs himself explained to an interviewer, assembling the cut-ups was a very conscious process:
"The selection and arrangement of materials is by no means deliberate, but there is a random factor by which I get the material."
Tale precision that's partly what distinguishes both i Burroughs cut-up that modern digital mash-ups dai dadaist collagesand Cubists who preceded them. Furthermore, it was a precision that had an intent: in rearranging different images, Burroughs sought to create new visual connections and determine new meanings. He wrote in an essay that the collage artists who had come before him presented their work as an art object. But they didn't expand the formula further… They didn't see collage as a silent language of juxtaposition.
The rearrangement
The remix is very contemporary mood in the music world.
As with his literary cut-ups, Burroughs was on the lookout for new truths which he felt could be revealed in the remix. She wrote once.
“Shakespeare and Rimbaud live in their words. Cut the lines of words and you will hear their voice. Cut-ups often turn out to be coded messages."
This might all sound like sort of mysticism induced by drugs, but there is a clear parallel with DJ mash-up search of what is latent in a song. Newman explains.
“In a mash-up you can often hear things that you wouldn't hear in the original. Sometimes it's just the way a text is phrased that might have been covered by a drum roll in the original, but it becomes audible when you put something more subdued over it."
Other mash-up artists also point to the importance of awaken the dormant elements.
"The attraction of Burroughs for me as far as I was concerned was that he combined disparate elements through hidden resemblances."
Says Mark Vidler, the DJ behind 'Rapture Riders', which combines Blondie and The Doors and has even removed the barbed wire of copyright laws to secure an official release with EMI Records. Vidler, who is now part of a live audiovisual mash-up initiative called Addictive TV, adds:
“It is about discovering something special between two disparate elements which, when combined, constitute a third original element".
Newman draws a comparison between mash-ups and random accidents that originated from the Burroughs method. He says:
“Sometimes combining very different genres will work one way or another. They often are the things you least expect to result best. You can see a resemblance to what Burroughs did, but it's a link rather than a direct influence."
While the mash-ups may be more indebted to hip-hop sampling and dance music remixing than they are to any artistic or literary movement, Burroughs' impact on it and engagement with pop culture in general suggests that his foreshadowing of the remix and sampling was more than mere coincidence. As well as inspiring cut-up lyrics by David BowieBurroughs' multiple collaborations included a rap album with i Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy.
His collages incorporate pop culture, dealer e celebrities, but also demonstrate his appreciation for what Allmer calls “theinfinite reproduction of reproduction”. An exhibition titled "Infinity" comprises photographs of collages of photographs, constituting what Burroughs has described as a "collage of collages of collage to the nth degree”. Mash-ups of mash-ups, anyone? You hear it here for the first time.
Cut-ups, mash-ups and democracy
Burroughs also broke with previous collage artists by emphasizing the democratizing potential of recombinatory art. “Anyone can cut-up", he has declared. Likewise, anyone armed with a computer can create a mash-up in their bedroom. Vidle explains:
"It's no coincidence that the emergence of mash-ups coincides with the advent of MP3s, fast Internet, illegal file sharing and a general 'fuck you' on record companies and copyright issues."
Kevin Allocca, Head of Culture and Trends at YouTube, points out how theuser-consumer hybrid on social media platforms currently requires the opportunity to engage with and transform snippets of pop culture. He says:
“There is no doubt that many of the best examples of mash-up work are natural successors to traditional collage and photomontage work. But in this case, the artefacts are digital and are imbued with the passion and life of the ordinary people who shared them.”
But the culture mash-up travel more in depthcompared to music remixes and to the videos of YouTube. To give impetus is also one peculiarities of the technology itself: the programming and user interfaces that allow us all to cut and share content across myriad social networks and applications — even if it's just photos of ourselves.
Today's content overloaded web pages have made us increasingly capable of believing, if not read, several pieces of text at the same time — just as we would with a photo collage. This illustrates a crucial point of departure between cut-up and mash-up. While the cut-up movement sought new meanings by demolishing coherence and linear narratives, i digital mash-ups Today bind i sounds and images most disparate present on the web, building connections and creating consistency. In fact, one of the reasons for their popularity is that mash-ups result in listeners with something familiar alongside something new. As Vidler says:
"The listener is familiar with the source material, but not with the context of how they hear it in the mash-up."
If Burroughs' cut-ups presaged today's digital remix culture, it is perhaps because the mash-ups act as an antidote to an online reality that is already fragmented to shreds, albeit with clicks and not scissors.
[Translated from English by Giuseppe di Pirro]
