Brion Gysin: Dream Machine at the New Museum

You’ve got until the end of the month to see Brion Gysin’s Dream Machine at the New Museum. This is the first US retrospective of his work. Gysin was a friend and collaborator of William S. Burroughs. He created the Cut-Up method, where he cut up words and phrases and reassembled them to be either nonsense or oracles. Burroughs and Gysin used the Cut-Up Method to write The Third Mind, which is very hard to read. The beats talked about the third mind being what happens when two people are together, talk, share ideas.

The Dream Machine is a kinetic light sculpture that creates visions when the viewer’s eyes are closed. Read more about the show here.

The museum’s audio tour (on an ipod mini) has a soundtrack to the show by Genesis P-Orridge, a fellow weirdo who took magic lessons from Gysin. Anyone want to teach me some magic lesssons?