“The word is now a virus. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.” - William S. Burroughs
American author William Burroughs tried many things to escape the word-virus – using copious amounts of narcotics, cutting up texts to destroy the meaning of words, and sitting in his self-build Orgone Accumulator.
Orgone is a mystical universal life force dreamed up by pseudo-scientist Wilhelm Reich in the 1930’s. It’s a cosmic energy that forms a blueish sphere around the earth, charging all of nature. To charge oneself with this energy Reich developed the Orgone Accumulator – a wooden structure resembling an outhouse, lined with layers of organic material and metal, that captures the orgone radiation and feeds it to the human within.
You are cordially invited to charge yourself with this life-energy in the Orgone Accumulator I am building at Ricklundgarden and experience “a special silence as you sometimes feel in deep woods, sometimes on a city street, a hum that is more a rhythmic vibration than a sound”.
Jan Jaap Kuiper is a Dutch filmmaker working on a film based on the “cut up trilogy” by William Burroughs. Orgone Accumulator is the second part in his series of installations to explore the spirit of Burroughs by reenacting practices he frequently mentions in his texts.
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