BURROUGHS (William). - Lot 170

BURROUGHS (William). Electronic revolution 1970-71. S.l. Henri Chopin, [1971]. - In-4, 286 x 220: 76 pp, (2 ff.), illustrated cover. Original bilingual edition, English-French, of this collection of essays by American writer and visual artist William Burroughs (1914-1997). The French translation is by Henri Chopin. The manifesto Electronic Revolution (1970), a dense, layered text, deals with topical issues that are still burning: coding and information jamming, state propaganda intoxication, the state of mass media and the use of the word as a "virus mechanism". William S. Burroughs questions the manipulation of consciousness through excessive media coverage; he speculates on the use of "the human voice as a weapon", imagining the manufacture of "far-reaching biological weapons from a new language". Electronic Revolution is the key work for understanding the negative conception of language in Burroughs' work [...]. "In Electronic Revolution I put forward the theory that a virus IS a very small unit of word and image. I then suggested that such units could be biologically activated to act as communicable viral tensions" ("The Electronic Revolution - Part one: Feedback from Watergate to the Garden of Eden", 1970)." (Félix Drouet, "William Seward Burroughs, Révolution électronique", Critique d'art, Actualité internationale de la littérature critique sur l'art contemporain, 2017.) The edition was printed on behalf of Henri Chopin and his OU collection. It was printed in an edition of 501 copies and features an illustration by Brion Gysin on the cover. One of 50 head copies on "Hayle" paper (no. 28), in slipcase, signed by the author at the justification and enriched separately with two signed serigraphs by Brion Gysin (320 x 240 mm). A very well preserved copy.