Burroughs Live
8 December 2008—19 January 2009
Part of Collision Course
William Burroughs. Photo © Jon Blumb
Curated by José Férez
Burroughs Live marks the mid point between the tenth anniversary of William Burroughs’ death and the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of his best known novel Naked Lunch. By means of film and video footage of Burroughs performing his works to camera alongside portraits of him by photographers, Robert Mapplethorpe, Annie Leibovitz, Ira Cohen and his self portraits and artworks, the presence of Burroughs is evoked. Examples of his collaborations with other artists such as Brion Gysin, Keith Haring and George Condo are exhibited alongside rare editions of Burroughs' books.
Portraits of Burroughs by, among others, David Hockney and Francesco Clemente as well as Damien Hirst are on show together for the first time. The exhibition opens with Gus Van Sant’s short film of Burroughs reading his ‘Thanksgiving Prayer’, an appropriately seasonal and bleak indictment of mainstream American values. This exhibition contains previously unseen footage of Burroughs and some of the artefacts he created but it remains essentially a trans-media event emphasising Burroughs' seminal position as a writer and performer of his own work for whom the devastating effects of an apocalyptic vision went hand in hand with an attitude that regarded life as an experiment.
