Brion Gysin

Brion Gysin (1957) - photo by Carl Van Vechten

John Clifford Brian Gysin , later Brion Gysin (born January 19, 1916 in Taplow , Buckinghamshire , England, † July 13, 1986 in Paris ), was an American painter and writer.

life and work

Brion Gysin was born in England during the First World War, the son of an Englishman who emigrated to Canada and a Canadian from an Irish Catholic family. His father fell on September 26, 1916. The mother returned to her family in Canada with the boy, married and in 1921 moved to Edmonton , Alberta . Brion Gysin attended an Anglican boarding school in the Protestant Prairie Province and then attended the Catholic Downside School , near Bath , England from 1932 to 1934 . In 1934 Gysin went to study at the Sorbonne. In Paris he joined the surrealists .

Brion Gysin served first in the US Army and then in the Canadian Armed Forces during World War II . He was trained as an interpreter at the Canadian Army S-20 Japanese Language School in an intensive course that included Japanese calligraphy .

In the army, Gysin had met a great-grandson of the slave Josiah Henson , who had fled to Canada and who had been the living model for Uncle Tom in Harriet Beecher Stowes novel. Gysin was interested in the history of both Hensons, and in 1946 his text To Master - A Long Goodbye on Josiah Henson appeared along with A History of Slavery in Canada .

In 1950 Gysin, invited by Paul Bowles , traveled to Morocco and stayed there. In Tangier , he founded the 1001 Nights restaurant together with the Moroccan painter Mohamed Hamri , in which the Sufi musicians, who later became famous, played Master Musicians of Jajouka for an international audience. Gysin met William S. Burroughs as a guest in his restaurant. Gysin was interested in Arabic calligraphy , he later explained to Burroughs that literature was a thing of the past and that painting was fifty years behind. Burroughs was convinced when Gysin went back to Paris after the bankruptcy of his restaurant in November 1958 and moved to Burroughs' house at the Beat Hotel at 9 rue Git le Couer and they worked closely together. This resulted in the famous cut-up collage technique.

In 1959 William S. Burroughs was able to publish Naked Lunch with Olympia Press , in 1961/62 the cut-up novels The Soft Machine (with a Japanese calligraphy by Gysin on the dust jacket) and The Ticket That Exploded . In 1960 The Exterminator was also published by Auerhahn in San Francisco and Minutes to Go by Two Cities in Paris. Minutes to Go is a collaboration between Burroughs and Gysin with Sinclair Beiles, a South African writer who worked for Olympia Press in Paris, and Gregory Corso , who published his novel The American Express there . Brion Gysin Let the Mice In , published in 1973 by Jan Herman for Something Else Press , dates back to this time. Gysin and Burroughs worked on an ambitious project called The Third Mind in 1964 and 1965, and the text-only versions of the book published in the late 1970s do not do justice to the intermedia plan. Gysin's script for the film adaptation of Naked Lunch also failed.

Gysin's poems follow the permutation principle, I Am That I Am (1960), No Poets Dont Own Words , I Don't Work You Dig , Junk Is No Good Baby (1962) are transformed into poems line by line by exchanging the words. Tape recordings of gunshots and a commanding voice generate the Fluxus-like Pistol Poem , in 1960 for the show The Permutated Poems of Brion Gysin of the British Broadcasting Corporation produced. Steve Lacy , the soprano saxophonist, recorded Gysin poems with his sextet in 1981.

Gysin's Dreamachine , a cylindrical flicker device that is said to have a psychoactive effect, achieved a certain fame . Ian Sommerville helped with the construction. The principle was later u. a. Propagated by Genesis P-Orridge , a replica of the original was distributed by the Hafler Trio .

Books

• To Master - A Long Goodnight; The Story of Uncle Tom, A Historical Narrative , including A History of Slavery in Canada . Creative Age Press, New York 1946.
• Minutes to Go (with Sinclair Beiles, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso). Two Cities Editions, Paris 1960. Gysin's contributions: First Cut-Ups , Minutes to Go , Cut Me Up, Brion Gysin, Cut Me Up, Brion Gysin, Cut Me Up, Brion Gysin, Cut Me In
• The Exterminator (with William S. Burroughs). Auerhahn Press, San Francisco 1960.
• The Process . Doubleday, New York 1969.
• Jan Herman (Ed.): Let The Mice In . By Brion Gysin; With Texts by William Burroughs & Ian Sommerville. Something Else Press, West Glover VT 1973.
• The Third Mind (with William S. Burroughs). Viking, New York 1978
• Beat Museum - Bardo Hotel Chapter 2 . Inkblot Publications, Oakland 1982.
• Here To Go: Planet R 101 (interviews with Terry Wilson). RE / Search, San Francisco 1972; Quartet Books, London 1985; Creation Books 2003 (new edition).
• Stories . Inkblot Publications, Oakland 1984.
• The Last Museum . Grove Press, New York 1986.
• Who Runs May Read (Inkblot / Xochi, Oakland / Brisbane 2000)
• Jason Weiss (Ed.): Back in No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader . Wesleyan University Press, 2001.

Discography

• Self-Portrait Jumping with Ramuntcho Matta, Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, Lizzy Mercier Descloux u. v. a. (Made To Measure / Crammed Discs, Brussels 1993)

literature

• John Geiger : Nothing Is True - Everything Is Permitted; The Life of Brion Gysin . The Disinformation Company, New York 2005.

Web links

• Literature by and about Brion Gysin in the catalog of the German National Library
• Permutation poems spoken by Gysin on ubu.com

References and comments

1. ^ The "Catholic Eton" is in Stratton-on-the Fosse, in Somerset , UK.
2. ↑ Geiger, Nothing Is True reports that the workload was an unbelievable 20 Kanji daily. The American Japanologist Donald Keene had similar experiences in the US Army. There, too, the lessons included the beginnings of grass writing .
3. ↑ That was Gertrude Stein's method. For Gysin 's 'I Am' machine-poem , Ian Sommerville's computer program was used, which sorted the elements of the biblical I am who I will be .