FLicKeR
Director: Nik Sheehan
Year: 2007
Duration: 72 minutes
Country: Canada
Print source: Canadian National Film Board
Web: www.flickerflicker.com
Brion Gysin was a magus, artist, writer and thinker. He lived in Tanger in the ‘50s before moving to Paris in the ‘60s where he lived at the legendary Beat Hotel with William Burroughs and the author’s partner Ian Sommerville. It was while staying at this hotel-come-flop-house that Gysin and Sommerville devised the Dreamachine, a device designed to create flickering light which, when used correctly, could stimulate the user’s alpha waves and transform their consciousness.
Made from a simple revolving barrel with carefully positioned slits cut into it, in which was placed a light, the device was described as a both the only work of art designed to be viewed with the eyes closed, and as a drug free high. As Sonic Youth’s Lee Renaldo states, using the device is “like touching God”.
FLicKeR examines the history, social and cultural impact of Gysin and the Dreamachine. Alongside archive footage of Gysin and Burroughs, FLicKeR features interviews with Gysin experts and Dreamachine users including Iggy Pop, Marianne Faithful, DJ Spooky, filmmaker and photographer Ira Cohen, Genesis P-Orridge, The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zinner, author Terry Wilson, poet John Giorno, and many others, who discuss the device alongside other aspects of Gysin’s life.
Mixing together history, science, art, magic, and culture, FLicKeR tells a remarkable story of one of the great yet tragically neglected figures so key to the counter culture of the past 50 years. With music from The Stooges and Psychic TV.