Campus celebration closes for Burroughs Century

IU’s celebration of acclaimed beat writer William S. Burroughs’ 100th birthday wrapped up during the weekend with the conclusion of the Burroughs film series and symposium.

The five-day-long festival was held in honor of the novelist, beginning on his would-be birthday last Wednesday and ending on Sunday.

The festival, titled the Burroughs Century, involved events on and off campus and included panels, exhibits, speakers and off-campus performances.

“There are moments that are even greater than you would have imagined,” said Charles Cannon, one of the event’s coordinators.

Cannon worked with a team of five other Burroughs fans to organize the event. Planning began last April.

While often remembered as a writer, Burroughs also worked with film, experimented with audio recording and worked as a painter.

Cannon said the festival drew what he would consider a cross-section of the Bloomington population. At the events, he saw students and non-students alike.

He said the primary demographic was likely graduate students.

“We wanted to create an event that wasn’t just an academic conference,” he said.

IU Cinema featured a number of films Burroughs was involved in, as well as distinguished guest speakers like Lydia Lunch.

Director of the IU Cinema Jon Vickers was among Cannon’s team of five.
Vickers pointed out that the IU Cinema is technically an art-house cinema. He said student attendance at a typical art-house theater would be about 15 percent, but at
the IU Cinema it’s about 35 percent.

The IU Cinema conducts about five academic symposia per year and has two more
coming in April on Latina and Italian film.

The Burroughs Symposium gave attendees the opportunity to screen rare films. “Burroughs: The Movie,” a 1983 documentary on Burroughs restored this year, screened in a theater for the first time in 30 years.

It also brought some of the most important Burroughs scholars in the world to Indiana, which Vickers said helps the Cinema establish itself as world-class.

“The symposium also had a mission to bridge campus and community,” said Vickers.
Cannon said he felt that Bloomington is the only place in Indiana where an event like this could have been so successful, adding that this is his third time living in
Bloomington.

“I was here and left,” he said, “and came back and left and came back again because it has that kind of pull.”

Oliver Harris, professor of American literature at Keele University in England, is the world’s leading Burroughs scholar. He has edited and republished 10 of Burroughs’ books.

He gave the festival’s keynote address.

Harris said even though he has attended century events in both New York and London, the festival in Bloomington was the largest.

The pervasive nature of Burroughs’ work is what makes the writer relevant around the world today, Harris said.

“A lot of people without even realizing it can sing lines from his books,” he said, referring to the Iggy Pop song “Lust for Life.”

Burroughs has also influenced artists such as the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith and Sonic Youth.

“You could also say that Burroughs’ work is difficult,” he said. “And we tend to like things that are easy.”

Burroughs scholars are consistently reinterpreting and rediscovering Burroughs’ work, he said.

Jack Sargeant, a prominent Burroughs scholar from Australia who specializes in the study of Burroughs’ work with film, gave the final guest address at the Cinema.

He said he became interested in Burroughs when he learned many of the recording techniques of industrial music were influenced by Burroughs’ experiments.

Sargeant was contacted by Cannon on Facebook over the summer and accepted the invitation to speak.

He spoke at length on the roles of magic and shifting perception in Burroughs’ work, saying again and again that “everything is connected.”

“I don’t think these things are dead. I think they’re still alive, and people need to learn about them,” Sargeant said.

Follow reporter Anna Hyzy on Twitter @annakhyzy.