The EBSN and The Horse Hospital are very proud to present two a three-day convergence of radical theory, sound, recognising the ongoing impact of the works of US writer William S. Burroughs and the Beat Generation, with London as a primary historical and contemporary nexus point for the American avant-garde. The event connects Burroughs’ experimental vision with London’s underground culture — transgressing scholarship, art, and performance in an atmosphere of collaboration and interdisciplinarity that explores the history of 1960s multi- and countercultural London, while giving a platform for the continuity of the works of Burroughs and the Beats into the present.

The event includes two evenings of extraordinary actions, performances and monologues in celebration and homage to William Burroughs. Drawing from a unique archival sound collection of unreleased or extreamly rare examples of William Burroughs own experimental tape and cutup recordings produced during different periods of his life.

The Artists:
Scanner, TAGc, Nova Ghost Transmission have all chosen separate unique sound recordings to work with and explore within their own leading expressive fields and genres. Extracting, cutting up, and reworking to rewire the Third Mind in a multi dimensional confrontational enchantment in sound and visual engagement. The Virus is transmuting again….

TAGc The Anti group (communications): One of the main pioneering Audio-Visual experimental projects of Adi Newton, with inclusions at ARS Electronica, Sophia Reiner gallery, Musée National d’Art Moderne, and many others. Newton’s other main project, ClockDva, are increasingly considered one of the pioneers of Industrial music in collaboration and association with Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire. Other projects include Matar, Spectral Unit, SOON and Psychophysicist . For this event The Anti Group will radically and psychoactively re-render the cut up, and Gysin & Burroughs’ third mind projections with an audio-visual set that is specifically designed to enhance and maximise Alpha levels by working specifically with Dr W. Grey Walters research that originally informed and inspired Gysin’s Dreamachine .On this occasion TAG will be Adi Newton with sound contributions and experiments by Stephen Mallinder, a long time advocate of Burroughs whose inspirational spirit informed his band Cabaret Voltaire.

Nova Ghost Transmission: John Gosling (Zos Kia/Psychic TV/Jiz), Isabelle De Jour (Jiz) and Jill Westwood (Fistfuck) unite in a rare live collision to construct an unstable 30–40 minute audio-visual performance. Back catalogues are cut open—film, sound, image—spliced, looped, degraded, fed back. Past transgressive works are reassembled into a volatile act of transmission and disruption.

Robin Rimbaud (Scanner): Since 1991, Robin Rimbaud, working under the name Scanner, has explored the intersection of sound, space and experimental electronic music. Through concerts, installations and recordings including Mass Observation (1994), Delivery (1997) and An Ascent (2020), he has earned international acclaim for innovative sonic work. Known for his “found sound” approach, Rimbaud transforms everyday audio fragments into immersive soundscapes alongside original compositions

Graham Duff: Acclaimed screenwriter, actor and producer (Ideal, Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, Count Arthur Strong, and more] resurrects his shocking Burroughs performance piece. Not to be missed!

No Land with Oliver Ray (The Patti Smith Band) and others…
No Land’s work activates poetries ancient & contemporary, channeled through a method of improvisation alongside musicians. She culls from an invisible intelligence– drawn down from the ether, driving the performance as an alchemy of possibilities. In the lineage of third-mind-cut-up, and in reverence to poetry as high enigma, the poet resists declaration or conclusion. She instead tunes her tongue to a radio frequency of realms beyond and mysteries within.
While No Land’s texts, often long painted scrolls, codex-like documents, and fragments of typewritten parchment, lay before her as a rough guide-map for where the performance will travel emotionally, or thematically— the element of improvisation & real-time splicing resists fixed form, freeing the poem into another dimension of consciousness. Her spirit perches on the edge of what feels like a cliff as the performance begins, as audience and performers enter the interzone of unknowing, sonic simultaneity, and mutability. Lines from departed poets appear alongside her own in an attempt to keep alive significant lineages.
In No Land’s work alongside musicians, the artist is not machinery. Her cut up is a return to spirit’s fluid intuition moving, dissonances and harmonics woven and rewoven, a watery musical consciousness, fragments half awake & half dreaming, a protest calling in a more compassionate kind of world.

This is a unique one time event for a new generation of artists celebrating the impact of William Burroughs and his associates with audio-visual communications, documents photographs, talks and Discussions. The Process continues……..

Daytime lineup includes:

• Iain Sinclair, Barry Miles and Oliver Harris in conversation: Acclaimed writer and psychogeographer Sinclair, legendary cultural Historian Miles and renowned Burroughs scholar Harris discuss Burroughs’ relationship with London.
• Discussion Panels, Talks, Roundtables and Performances featuring acclaimed writers, poets, artists, musicians, and Burroughs scholars including:
  Thomas Antonic
  Phil Baker
  Joseph Darlington
  Allen Fisher
  Rob W. Jones II
  Symantha Jones
  Matthew Levi Stevens
  Ian MacFadyen
  Oliver Ray
  James Riley
  Jack Sargeant
  Florian Zappe
• More info coming soon…

Any queries please contact Ya-Chu Fu ([email protected]).
Organizing Committee:
Ya-Chu Fu – Benjamin J Heal –Simon Kane

Huge thanks to our hosts, the Horse Hospital– a unique and fantastic alternative arts venue in the centre of London.
Huge thanks too to our incredibly supportive sponsors, without whom this event would be impossible:
Third Mind Books
Moloko Books
Outskirts of the City

We invite you to submit proposals on these topics, or on other aspects of the Beat Generation. Individual papers will be limited to 20 minutes. As well as paper presentations, we also invite submissions for panels, roundtables, workshops, artistic performances, or other creative endeavours.

Please submit an abstract (250 words) that clearly outlines your proposal, and a short bio note, to conference administrator Raven See at [email protected] before October 15, 2024. We will respond by the end of December 2024.

For more information, please visit: https://ebsn.eu/,

Organizers: Heike Mlakar, Florian Zappe, Tomasz Stompor, Alexander Greiffenstern

Location: University of Hildesheim, Germany (Department of English Language and Literature)

Located at the geographical heart of Germany and framed by the history of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Hildesheim offers a unique blend of academic pursuit and cultural heritage. Just 30 km from Hanover, Hildesheim provides excellent connectivity to larger metropolises such as Hamburg and Berlin. Home to approximately 9,000 students, the University of Hildesheim stands out as one of the country’s more intimate higher education institutions. This smaller scale fosters a welcoming and personal atmosphere, where students are encouraged to form strong bonds with peers and faculty alike.

Call for Papers:

The radical ethos of the Beat movement, whether defined in aesthetic, political, or cultural terms, is deeply rooted in the specific historical situation in which it emerged: the binary-coded world of the Cold War. During this era, the ideological polarization of global politics combined with the domestic imperatives of social and political conformism led—on both sides of the Iron Curtain—to the phenomenon that Herbert Marcuse described as the “one-dimensional society” defined by “a pattern of […] thought and behavior in which ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe.” (Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, p. 14). The tension between dominant materialist values and spiritual seeking was central to Beat thought and literature, revealing a profound resistance to the encroaching uniformity of the age.

Especially in Germany, where the annual conference of the EBSN will take place in 2025, the ideological polarization became manifest as a geopolitical division that sliced the country into two political entities with opposing systems. In reaction to government restrictions and repression by an official state ideology in the East and a hegemonic cultural conservatism in the West, countercultural movements still developed on the fringes of both societies. At the heart of this geopolitical flashpoint, the international dimensions of political and cultural conflict were observable in a crystallized form that took on various other facets around the globe.

While it may be a truism that the emergence of Beat culture in the mid-twentieth century was a reaction to the “one-dimensionality” of the era, it is vital to understand its significance for the radicalism of the phenomenon’s ethos. The Beats’ revitalization and expansion of the old Modernist battle cry “Make it New!” was an assault on the political and cultural foundations of Cold War-era “one-dimensionality” on a global scale. Originating in the United States, their radical approaches to art and life generated similar movements in many other countries, where artists and intellectuals felt stifled by the political climate.

Although the Cold War ended 35 years ago, today’s social divisions follow similarly polarized fault lines, where issues of free speech feel ever-present; discussions of sexuality, critiques of war, and advocacy of human rights seem under threat in ways that mirror past dangers. This invites us to revisit and discuss the unbroken topicality of the radical aesthetico-political approaches of Beat culture in the light of current events.

Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to, the following:

Accommodation options

InterCityhotel Hildesheim (next to the train station, buses 1 and 4 running directly to Buehler Campus where the conference takes place)

Bahnhofsplatz 2, 31134 Hildesheim 

+49 5121 9134 000

[email protected]

Hotel Bürgermeisterkapelle (near Marktplatz)

Rathausstraße 8, 31134 Hildesheim
Tel.: +49 (51 21) 17929-0 

http://www.hotelbuergermeisterkapelle.de/ 

Van der Valk Hotel Hildesheim (located at Markplatz, the center of Hildesheim)

Markt 4, 31134 Hildesheim
Tel.:+49 (5121) 300-600 

https://www.vandervalk.de/en

Hey Lou Hotel Hildesheim (very central location)

Zingel 26, 31134 Hildesheim

+49 (0) 5121 912 870 0

[email protected]

M & A City Hotel Hildesheim (central)

Hindenburgplatz 6, 31134 Hildesheim
Tel.: +49 (51 21) 3 90 81 

Single Room: from 55.00 EUR 

https://www.ma-cityhotel.de/

We invite you to submit proposals on these topics, or on other aspects of the Beat Generation. Individual papers will be limited to 20 minutes. As well as paper presentations, we also invite submissions for panels, roundtables, workshops, artistic performances, or other creative endeavours.

Please submit an abstract (250 words) that clearly outlines your proposal, and a short bio note, to conference administrator Raven See at [email protected] before October 15, 2024. We will respond by the end of December 2024.

For more information, please visit: https://ebsn.eu/,