The Collage of Perception: William S. Burroughs & Harry Everett Smith

The 20th century finds humanity in a critical moment between chaos and reconstruction. Situated firmly at a crossroad in history, the 20th century will give rise to such cultural institutions as the atom bomb, the television, and apathy. The general feeling of malaise will travel swiftly as a bullet through Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s head and explode into our collective consciousness like the space shuttle Challenger. Perhaps all other subsequent attempts to “challenge” will be doomed to failure as well. Amid this turmoil of antiquated cables and wires that extends from our nervous systems, there is a quiet revolution in our hearts and minds that asks the question, “How?” How can we overcome this malaise? How can we reform ourselves and our understanding of our own identities into a picture of humanity that more closely resembles persons instead of gods? Two men poised at the apex of critical social and political upheaval at the equator of the century will attempt to answer this question in the most ludicrous fashion they can think of: through art