Towers Open Fire

Towers Open Fire, shot between 1961 and 1962, is a black and white, hand held (shot by Balch himself), encoded structural piece that is “a cinematic interpretation of many of Burroughs’ major themes” (Jack Sargeant). It is not a cut-up itself, although it does contain the first evi- dence of the technique being applied directly to film in a short cut-up sequence shot on a quayside in Paris. A “collage of the main themes and situations or ‘routines’ that appear in Burroughs cut-up novels of the period” (Rob Bridgett), Towers portrays “the destruction of the stock market and disintegration of the Board”, as described by Sargeant. This is shown by Burroughs himself in camouflage and a gas mask, brandish- ing an “orgasm gun” and shooting photographs of families and stereo- typical images of social happiness. Effectively destroying the pictorial form of language and the conventional representation of happiness. When Burroughs commands “Towers open fire!”, sound waves are emitt- ed by antennae to attack the Boards’ senses.
The film was done experimenting with the new technology of home recording, with Gysin, Burroughs and electronics genius Ian Sommerville pioneering the world’s earliest examples of sampling and tape manipu- lation. The soundtrack comprised Burroughs and Gysin permutating phrases from a Scientology auditing test. The result is by turns hypnotic and disturbing; a kind of undiluted cerebral caustic. The film opens with Burroughs as the voice of control (“white, white, white as far as the eye can see...”) and ends with pages of Egyptian hieroglyphs blown by the wind down a country track. Once it was finished, Balch assembled the footage on to four reels and gave them to his editor, instructing her to cut a foot from each reel — just enough time to see an image without absorbing its narrative details — and splice them together sequentially, sight unseen.