NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Bryon Gysin

Brion Gysin (January 19, 1916 - July 13, 1986) was a writer and painter born outside of London, Taplow, Buckinghamshire. January 19 is the 19th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1916 (MCMXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar). ... July 13 is the 194th day (195th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 171 days remaining. ... 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The term writer can apply to anyone who creates a written work, but the word more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms. ... Painting by Rembrandt self-portrait Detail from Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez, in which the painter portrayed himself at work For the computer graphics program, see Corel Painter. ...

Brion Gysin is best known for his rediscovery of Tristan Tzara's cut-up technique while cutting through a newspaper upon which he was trimming some mats. In Tangier he established a restaurant called the 1001 Nights with Moroccan musicians from the village of Jajouka. The musicians performed there for an international clientele. Gysin also experimented with cut-ups while living in Morocco and shared his discovery with his friend William S. Burroughs in Paris in 1958 where they both lived at the Beat Hotel at 9 rue Gît le Coeur. Gysin told Burroughs that writing was fifty years behind painting. Burroughs subsequently put the cut-up technique to use in his prose. An experiment that culminated in "Interzone" and dramatically changed the landscape of American literature. Tristan Tzara (April 16, 1896 â€“ December 25, 1963) is the assumed name of Sami Rosenstock, born in MoineÅŸti, BacÄƒu, Romania, a poet and essayist who lived for the majority of his life in France. ... The cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique or genre in which a text is cut up at random and rearranged to create a new text. ... A view of Tangier bay at sunrise as seen from Cape Malabata Tangier(Tanja Ø·Ù†Ú†Ø© in Berber and Arabic, TÃ¢nger in Portuguese, and Tanger in French), is a city of northern Morocco with a population of 669,685 (2004 census). ... William Seward Burroughs II (1914 â€“ August 2, 1997), more commonly known as William S. Burroughs, was an American novelist, essayist, social critic, painter and spoken word performer. ... The Beat Hotel was a small, run-down hotel at 9 Rue Git-le-Coeur in the Latin Quarter of Paris. ... The cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique or genre in which a text is cut up at random and rearranged to create a new text. ... American literature refers to written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and Colonial America. ...

Gysin helped Burroughs with the editing of several of his novels, and wrote a script for a film version of Naked Lunch which was never produced. The pair collaborated on a large manuscript for Grove Press titled The Third Mind but it was determined that it would be impractical to publish it as originally envisioned. The book later published under that title incorporates little of this material. Naked Lunch is a novel by William S. Burroughs. ... Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1951. ... The Third Mind is a book by Beat Generation novelist William S. Burroughs and artist/poet/novelist Brion Gysin. ...

As a joke, he contributed a recipe for marijuana fudge to a cookbook by Alice B. Toklas; it was unintentionally included for publication, becoming famous under the name Alice B. Toklas brownies. Cannabis sativa Look up marijuana in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Alice B. Toklas, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1949 Alice B. Toklas (April 30, 1877 â€“ March 7, 1967) was the lover and confidante of writer Gertrude Stein. ... An Alice B. Toklas brownie, also known as an Alice B. Tokin brownie or more colloquially as a bud brownie, magic brownie, or special brownie, is a type of hash cookie (a cake containing cannabis). ...

A consummate innovator, Gysin altered the cut-up technique to produce what he called permutation poems in which a single phrase was repeated several times, with the words rearranged in a different order with each reiteration. A memorable example of this is "I don't dig work, man."

Many of these permutations were derived using a random sequence generator in an early computer program written by Ian Sommerville. There are a number of people called Ian Sommerville: Professor Ian F. Sommerville (born 1951), the British computer scientist and author Ian Sommerville (possibly 1940-1976) , associated with the Beat Generation Category: ...

He also experimented with permutation on recording tape and, in 1960, was asked by the BBC to produce material for broadcast. The results included "Pistol Poem", which was created by splicing together the sounds of a gun firing recorded at different distances. That year, the piece was subsequently used as a theme for the performance in Paris of Le Domaine Poetique, a showcase for experimental works by people like Gysin, Françoise Dufrêne, Bernard Heidsieck, and Henri Chopin. The British Broadcasting Corporation, usually known as the BBC (and also informally known as the Beeb or Auntie) is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world in terms of audience numbers, employing 26,000 staff in the United Kingdom alone and with a budget of more than GBÂ£4 billion... Bernard Heidsieck (born 1928) is a French sound poet. ... Henri Chopin (born 1922) is an avant-garde poet and musician. ...

He worked extensively with the noted jazz soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy. Jazz is a musical art form that originated in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States at around the start of the 20th century, mostly popular in the 1920s. ... Allen|Henry Red Allen]], George Pops Foster and Zutty Singleton and then with Kansas City jazz players like Buck Clayton, Dicky Wells, and Jimmy Rushing before jumping into the heart of the avant-garde by performing on the debut album of Cecil Taylor, appearing with Taylors groundbreaking quartet at...

Together with Ian Sommerville he built what is called the Dreamachine in the early 1960s. This is a device meant to be viewed with the eyes closed. He is the subject of a critically-acclaimed biography by John Geiger titled, Nothing Is True Everything Is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin and, features in Geiger's book "Chapel of Extreme Experience: A short history of stroboscopic light and the Dream Machine". A monograph on Gysin was also published by Thames and Hudson. Also of interest is a collection of homages, Man From Nowhere, by Joe Ambrose, Frank Rynne, and Terry Wilson. In addition to substantial texts by the authors, Man from Nowhere contains tributes to Gysin by Marianne Faithfull, John Cale, William Burroughs, and Paul Bowles. homemade version semi-off The Dreamachine (or Dream Machine) was invented by Beat generation members Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville in 1959. ... Frank Rynne, an Irish-born producer for the Sub Rosa label, is a staunch advocate of the work and views of the late Moroccan painter Mohamed Hamri. ... Marianne Faithfull (born 29 December 1946) is an English singer and actress whose career spans over four decades. ... John Davies Cale (born March 9, 1942) is a Welsh musician, songwriter and record producer. ... William S. Burroughs. ... Paul Frederic Bowles (December 30, 1910 - November 18, 1999), was an American composer, author, and traveler. ...

Bibliography

To Master A Long Goodnight (Creative Age Press, New York, 1946)
Minutes to Go (with William S. Burroughs) (Two Cities Editions, Paris, 1960)
The Exterminator (with William S. Burroughs) (Auerhahn Press, San Francisco, 1960)
The Process (Doubleday, New York, 1969)
"Brion Gysin Let The Mice In" (With Texts by William Burroughs & Ian Sommerville) (Something Else Press, Vermont, 1973), ed. Jan Herman
The Third Mind (with William S. Burroughs) (Viking, New York, 1978)
Here To Go (Interviews with Terry Wilson) (Quartet Books, London, 1982)New edition Creation Books 2003
Stories (Inkblot Publications, 1984)
The Last Museum (Grove Press, New York, 1986)
Who Runs May Read (Inkblot/Xochi, Oakland/Brisbane, 2000)
Back in No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader (Wesleyan University Press, 2001), ed. Jason Weiss (posthumous)

The Process is the title of a novel by Brion Gysin which was first published in 1969. ...

External links

Official site of the Master Musicians of Jajouka featuring Bachir Attar
Site of the Master Musicians of Joujouka Frank Rynne
[1] Joe Ambrose
Article about Gysin
Village Voice review of Back in No Time
What does Brion Gysin's art mean? Extrageographic magazine article about Gysin
William S. Burroughs' & Brion Gysin's Non-Linear Adding Machine

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