London Interzone, Horse Hospital, 4-6 September 2026
Organized by the European Beat Studies Network, London Interzone offered two days of ‘Burroughs and Beats rewired’, as well as a preceding reception event and afternoon walk on the Sunday.
The Horse Hospital is an amazing arts space in Bloomsbury which features regular musical and other events. The conference space was accessed down a slopping cobbled passage, at the end of which was a ill-lit room packed with chairs, a bar, a DJ booth and a book table manned by Jim Pennington, co-founder of Aloes Books.
The event spread its considerations wide, into Burroughs influence, both directly and indirectly, on experimental music, queer studies, resisting control, psychogeography, collaboration and cut-ups. Burroughs voice burbled from the sound system as a one-eyed Burroughs glowered down at us from the screen, and we were off. Introductions and a video welcome from Anne Waldman, then straight in to the opening roundtable with the title ‘Electronic Re-Evolution’.
The discussion was wide-ranging, from ideas of aural aggravation (also the name of one of the speaker’s blog), links to cybernetics and mind control, how cut-ups – in visuals, sound and text – can ‘grant meaning to fragments’ and offer new lines of association. There was also discussion of found and overheard material, Burroughs’ and Ian Somerville’s own tape experiments, and how introducing doubt and ‘perceptual interruptions’ into a listener’s or reader’s mind helps them resist control, as does paranoia. This sidetracked into talk about black boxes in aircraft, Scientology and how cut-ups are a personal tool for mis- and new understanding[s]. All good stuff, if a little unfocussed.
If it was interesting hearing this discussion, particularly as it included differing points of view from the USA and Europe, as well as the UK, it was soon overshadowed by Oliver Harris’ keynote talk which followed. Harris is a key researcher in archive and textual studies of Burroughs’ work, with numerous books, articles, papers and contextual introductions to complete or redux editions of Burroughs’ work. He is, as his presentation made clear, an entertaining and erudite speaker.
Harris framed his discussion of synergy and collaboration within Burroughs’ and Brion Gysin’s The Third Mind book as a detective story in several chapters, gradually offering us evidence that Burroughs had gradually taken over the cut-up collaborations first evidenced in Minutes to Go – which also included work by Sinclair Belles and Gregory Corso – to make his own name. As Harris shows in his new book In Two Minds (Moloko, 2026) the work was first planned to be published under a group pseudonym, IRU representative, which then got changed to Hassan Sabah once Gysin has shared his knowledge of the mythical assassin with Burroughs. Somehow, however, it was Burroughs name that drew the most attention and his work that featured the most. Even the cover of The Third Mind, which supposedly details how collaboration produces a different way of thinking (ie 1+1 = 2 in creative terms), turns out despite photographic implication, to only show Burroughs: the silhouette we assume to be Gysin is not. And in the same manner, although Gysin took the famous series of photographs of Burroughs against the DANGER sign at a construction site, his name has become detached from it and it is Burroughs we remember.
Harris introduced and chaired the next session, billed as ‘Barry Miles and Iain Sinclair in Conversation’ but even he could not really get the conversation going. There were too many gaps in both memories and conversations, evidence of little planning or forethought about the subject matter, and it mostly ended up as a gentle reminisce of how Burroughs in London mostly kept himself to himself and was known for not liking the place.
The afternoon was panel discussion about ‘Burroughs/Art/Sound’, this time with musicians and writers onstage (well, the front floor area!) including Adi Newton of Clock DVA and Robin Rimbaud, aka Scanner. The discussion here returned to ideas of ‘fucking with/up authority’ through extreme performance or noise, recycling, remixing and sampling, and how this contributed to ‘data poisoning’, changing communal memory and society by subversion and defamiliarization. Again, it seemed to lack a real focus, and a lot of the ideas of countercultures, resistance and experimental art practices seemed very outdated and clichéd. Post Throbbing Gristle, Swans, Merzbow, Whitehouse or Psychic TV, does calling your band Fistfuck or trying to deafen, frighten, provoke or shock your audience really result in any response other than boredom? I don’t think so!
After time for a pint and a meal, it was time for an evening of performance and film. Director Aaron Brookner played excerpts from his new Nova 78 film about the Nova Convention in New York, constructed from his uncle Howard Brookner’s previously unknown film footage, which turned up when he was tracking down the original footage of the documentary Burroughs. It was great to see Burroughs and others in performance, and Bruckner’s discussion with Jack Sergeant was lucid and informative. I hope DVD releases aren’t too far off!
No Land, a NYC poet was up next. She arranged a number of relevant texts (her own and others’) in front of her, and ‘sampled’ them live as Oliver Ray, who played in Patti Smith’s band for many years, played atmospheric abstract guitar. To be honest I was ready to be seduced by hypnotic slow guitar, long video loops on screen and No Land’s childlike declamations. The critic in me knew there was nothing new going on, and the guitar playing was what rock musicians (as opposed to improvising musicians) do when they think they are improvising, but it was an enjoyable and soothing set. Scanner followed, and despite the inclusion of ‘rare and unreleased Burroughs recordings’ present in the mix, it sounded like Scanner always does and I left early, in search of sleep…
Saturday, day two, started with another highlight: Allen Fisher’s heavily illustrated talk which placed Burroughs’ art and writing within a wide-ranging web of associated art, experiment, events, influence and installations. From Dada and the surrealists to Wilhelm Reich’s Orgone Accumulator Box, via Buckminster Fuller, Rauschenberg, Kurt Schwitters, automatism, Bruce Conner, Kenneth Anger and Edward Keinholz’s The Beanery in Amsterdam, Fisher pressed the overload button and provided a fascinating whirlwind tour of possible connections and disconnections.
Unfortunately, Symantha Jones’ cut-up workshop was less open-ended, and seemed to focus on controlled collage rather than chance operations of edited chaotic juxtaposition, although I recognise that it is a tool to be used in anyone’s own way.
I got summonsed to a family emergency late morning and was unable to attend the sessions about ‘No Coincidences’ or ‘Burroughs & the Magical Universe’, which was disappointing as I am intrigued by Burroughs’ idea that magic is when you can make something happen: rather than mystical mumbo-jumbo he thought you could use tape machines and texts to do this. It also meant I missed an evening performance of Nova Ghost Transmission, a collaborative ‘live collision to construct an unstable audio-visual performance’ and Adi Newton from Clock DVA in his guise as The Anti Group’s performance involving ‘rare and unreleased Burroughs recordings’ again, but also ‘sound contributions and experiments’ by Stephen Mallinder of Cabaret Voltaire. I still don’t know if Mallinder was there in person or simply sent Newton some audio clips.
So, a disappointing end to my conference, but I offer sincere thanks to the European Beat Studies Network for the chance to attend and be reminded just how relevant and influential Burroughs was and is. I look forward to returning to the Interzone.
Rupert Loydell
