Philippe-Alain Michaud: Beat Generation and the Bricolage in the Age of Reproducibility

Following a curatorial guided tour through the »Beat Generation« exhibition, Philippe-Alain Michaud talks about the movement and their stylistic means.

The so called »Beat generation«, that appears just after the Second World War is the first generation of writers to make a systematic use of the technics and tools of reproductibility. Firstly, the typewriter is not only employed as a simple tool but also allows to speed up and mechanize the process of writing. Furthermore, the phonograph, the mimeograph and the tape recorder are used to transform the very nature of language. In adopting the culture of reproductibility, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and many others were breaking with the old myth of romanticism to create a new literature freed based on the concept of subjectivity.