Beat Cinema - les films de la Beat generation

In the context of the aftermath of the Second World War and the legitimate existence of some totalitarian governments, the quest for individual freedom becomes fundamentally urgent. Various artistic movements, like the Beat Generation, advocate the absence of constraints by valorising the use of spontaneous acts. The encounter between Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), William Seward Burroughs (1914-1997) and Irwin Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) in New York in 1944 marks the beginning of this movement. Herbert Huncke, a dealer who introduces Burroughs to hard drugs, continuously uses an expression of his own « beaten-down »that will eventually become emblematic to the American movement.  The mind and body are tested to their uttermost limits, a state that defies death and opens up new psychic territories. Between finitude and immortality, a new awareness that puzzles the conventional limits within a human being, comes into play. Sexual emancipation and the use of all kinds of psycho tropes take up their position in the middle of conservative society. Coming from the romantic model, by challenging social norms they refute any form of moral injunction. Day to day existence is continuously revisited and challenged and a risky path followed that pushes back mental, time and space experiences Transferred into words, these experiments of excesses and journeys have been seized very differently by authors. While Kerouac considers a state of trance to be necessary to produce a text, Burroughs rejects the usage of drugs as being incompatible with any creative process. For the latter, in order to bypass conventional usages, the ability to master and control the meaning of words is a necessity. The rules of the English language, and in particular the ones which apply to punctuation, must be bypassed and replaced by flux with a syncopated rhythm. Punctuations, scanned like pulsations, are introduced similar to the ones applied to the structures of free jazz. Putting at risk an authors' responsibility, these writers develop production processes led by hazard.  Simultaneously organic and mechanical, the “cut ups” investigated by Brion Gysin (1916-1986) and Burroughs are the result of a selection which is followed by a parasitic re-appropriation of pre-existing materials.

Originally applied to pictorial experiments, this process links together fragments of images with odd bits of writings, mixed at random until they become repetitive. This breakup of both the narration’s linear construction and the conventional figurative order by a network structure confuses customary reading and vision.

The poetry nights initiated by the Six Gallery in October 1955 generate public readings and performances of urban poetry that spreads like a virus into all directions, reaching the cinematographic domains. Beyond the basic transcription of a novel into a movie, the works result from an intensive collaboration between writers and independent film makers from New York. The subliminal nature of how we perceive is the object of research through stroboscopic effects in which all sequences turn up as intermittent fragments. The hypnotic impact derives from strategies used by the mass media to sustain the public’s attention. But even if it is aimed at manufacturing dreams, the media support is re-appropriated excluding the usage of spectacular technical performances.

Starting the “Dream machine”, the writers Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerwille conceived a kinetic lantern, before the cinematograph, a lantern that tirelessly projects the same abstract motives? Refusing ordinary entertainment techniques reflects political resistance against the submission of the individual consciousness induced by cultural uniformity.

Full attention is requested from the audience in order to perceive the different layouts made from similar fragments. The obsessive nature of these repetitive patterns reveals the paradox of a free spirit: conditioned by known territories, genuine expression can only emerge within a system obstructed by constraints.