chrche collins gertrudia
Niklas Terki
The idea of permutations came to Gysin upon seeing the Divine Tautology I AM THAT I AM in print. It looked to him asymmetric, and he discovered that he could correct this effect by switching the last two words, turning the tautology into a question: AM I THAT, AM I? In his book Brion Gysin Let the Mice In (1960) the permutations of the Divine Tautology cover seven pages of text.
The collaboration of two artists does not engender a third mind, but only a new oeuvre, whether novel, poem or painting. Nor does its potential reader become a third mind (let us leave the third man to the detectives, and the third eye to metaphysicians).
ISBN: 0670700991
New York, NY: Viking Press, 1978. First American Edition. Hardcover. "From his 1953 Junky to the now-classic Naked Lunch and his more recent Exterminator!, William Burroughs has remained one of the most controversial- and innovative- of contemporary writers. Through two decades of underground publication and court cases he has become known as this country's leading experimentalist...The Painter Brion Gysin, who said twenty years ago that writing was fifty years behind painting, invented one of Burroughs' most debated methods, the "cut-up"- scissors-and-paste assemblies of sentence fragments cut out of context and rearranged for totally new meanings. Like Joyce, Burroughs has long felt that the word, far from being sacred, is too often a barrier to meaning, a tool used by the powerful against the powerless. Here Burroughs and Gysin explore, document, and illustrate their "cut-up" method in a series of dazzling and often dizzying collaborations." (from front flap) The milestone collaboration between William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), Founding Father of the Beat Generation-&-Beyond, among the foremost literary & cultural figures of all time; & Brion Gysin (1916-1986), the artist & writer who was WSB's great friend & colleague: THE THIRD MIND, to which we pay the utmost tribute as the very name of our enterprise. The cut-up method(s), while initially discovered serendipitously by Gysin, were perfected by WSB & given his sui generis literary & philosophical signature. This volume, published long after the 1960s cut-up height, represents a distillation of the cut-ups as practiced by WSB & Gysin, & includes their interviews & essays that explain their history & the ideas behind them. Offered here is the first American edition of The Third Mind, the first in English, preceded two years earlier (1976) by a French-language edition. Hardcover in unclipped first-issue dust jacket (with $12.95 price & "1178" printed at front flap), first edition, first printing, though neither explicated as such at copyright page which states "First published in 1978 by The Viking Press." Shoaf, Section I, No. 40, pg. 45; Schottlaender (new 5.0 edition!), A35(B), pg. 16. Shoaf, in his entry, notes that WSB "...wrote that the title stemmed from Think and Grow Rich, a twentieth-century guide to salesmanship by Napoleon Hill, who counseled that when two minds work together there is always a third one that results. Others have interpreted (that) the third mind comes from the interaction of writing and visual art." (pg. 45) Schottlaender, in his entry, notes that "Portions of this book appeared during the years 1960-1973..." in various publications as noted on copyright page; & that (per Barry Miles) the collaborators "...intended to have more than a hundred collages executed by Bill (Burroughs) and Brion (Gysin), using a grid system that Brion had worked out as the visual base...[but when published] it lacked most of its illustrations." (pg. 16) Believe us, we could go on & on about The Third Mind, but let's suffice to say it is among the rarest & most quintessential WSB-&-Co. collectibles of them all, & that this copy is in exceptionally very fine condition, indeed the best we've ever seen or obtained: Book with only mild-to-moderate fading at thin margin/edge of front board; very light wear at edges & corners of front, back covers & spine (silver-gilt lettering & graphics at latter completely bright & intact) incl. moderate fading of upper board-edges, one very small crease-gouge at lower right front board-edge with slight loss of black surface paper; mild browning & occasional spotting to upper edge of text block; much less to side & lower edges of same; very slight bending of spine toward front. Interior very fine with sight browning, light spotting to inner side edges of blank white rear endpaper & paste-down; very small rectangular area of moderate fading at black board margin/edge above upper edge of rear paste-down near spine; all page leaves appear tight, crisp & substantially mint. Dust jacket relatively quite very fine with mild browning, very slight rubbing & faint scratching to front, back covers, spine & flaps; a touch of wear & a few tiny bumps, creases at edges & corners of same; one small, thin area (about 3/4") of minor chipping at upper edge of rear flap nearest left corner. Very Fine / Very Fine. [Item #5899]
The Viking Press / A Seaver Book, 1978. Hardcover with Dust Jacket. SIGNED and inscribed by Burroughs, 'For Ken / all the best from the third mind / William S. Burroughs / Oct. 5, 1981 / n. y. c.' 194pp. 12mo, gray paper over boards backed in black cloth with silver gilt lettering. Some light offsetting to the gutters, else FINE, exceedingly clean and sharp with fresh, crisp pages and tight binding; DJ is a bit toned at the ex. FINE. Item #503951
Ugo Rondinone and the new director of Le Palais de Tokyo, Marc-Olivier Wahler, have mounted a high-quality group show that criss-crosses an assortment of generational frontiers and stylistic barriers. Ugo Rondinone is an artist known for his talent for building systems of connections and, given the visual results of this exhibit, he has, in large part, very good taste in art. I particularly enjoyed his assembling excellent works of Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs, Ronald Bladen, Lee Bontecou, Andy Warhol, Nancy Grossman, Cady Noland, Martin Boyce, Paul Thek and Emma Kunz.
I think what might be interesting about this disquieting show, is to look at how this group show differs in its conjoining (or not) from other group shows by pinning it to the collaborative work of Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs from the early 1960s known as The Third Mind. Also we can place THE THIRD MIND in the context of wider connections and ponder at what point does homage turn into exploitation?
First some background. Beat writer Burroughs and the artist Brion Gysin, known predominantly for his rediscovery of the Dada master Tristan Tzara's cut-up technique and for co-inventing the flickering Dreamachine device, worked together in the early 1960s on a publishing project that used a chance based cut-up method. A cut-up method consists of cutting up and randomly reassembling various fragments of something to give them a completely new and unexpected meaning. 1+1=3
Burroughs would soon begin collaborating on a book project with Brion Gysin using the cut-up method; cutting up and reassembling various fragments of sentences and images to give them a new and unexpected meaning. The Third Mind is the title of the book they devised together following this method - and they were so overwhelmed by the results that they felt it had been composed by a third person; a third author (mind) made of a synthesis of their two personalities. Ginsburg remained highly skeptical for some time, but following his travels in India came to appreciate the cut-up technique, even while never employing it.
Joseph Nechvatal presently teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City (SVA) and at Stevens Institute of Technology. His computer-robotic assisted paintings and computer software animations are shown regularly in galleries and museums throughout the world.
Over the years, there are a few classroom projects and experiences that I sense have elicited the third mind. I can recall a number of collaborative undertakings, sometimes small and other times overwhelming, that have brought out more from myself, my colleagues, and my students than we could have imagined. I put together a list of a few of them along with a project description and resources. I must credit the people I work with for their willingness to try these out, and also to attempt many other undertakings which have not succeeded. All our work together has been humbling, exciting, and a valuable learning experience.
Vanessa Sinclair, PsyD, is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist in private practice in New York City. She is a founding member of Das Unbehagen: A Free Association for Psychoanalysis, which facilitates psychoanalytic lectures, classes, and events in and around New York City. Together with artist Katelan Foisy, she explores the magic and artistic expression of the cut-up method and the third mind. You can learn more about that at Chaos of the Third Mind. She contributes to a variety of publications, including the The Fenris Wolf, DIVISION/Review: A Quarterly Psychoanalytic Forum, ERIS Magazine, and The Brooklyn Rail.
We live in an age where the algorithmic feedback systems we surround ourselves with have reached a level of complexity beyond our understanding. Since the wild utopian hopes for the age of the internet are now in retreat, this unfathomable, technological structure that surrounds us, yet is invisible, adds to the general mystification of the world. This might add to why an interest in the occult and the psychedelic has seen a pronounced increase in recent years. Not only are MDMA, LSD and other drugs regaining a foothold in the psychiatric communities, but Fortean topics have also been embraced by publishers such as Strange Attractor Press in the UK or Edda in Sweden.
A ganzfeld experiment is a way to expand consciousness in a non-chemical way. The subject of the experiment places half a ping-pong ball over each eye and stares into a red light, wearing headphones blasting static and white noise. The idea is that you enter a receptive state resembling hypnagogia, where experiments of a telepathic nature can take place. Matmos used the experiment to attempt to project the concept of their album into the mind of volunteers whose experiences and visions were recorded and used as scores, as literal directions, or as found sounds.
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