Brion Gysin, the Cut Up, and the unshackling of words.

the final for my history course (480T History of Graphic Design) is a critical analysis of an influential artist. i chose Brion Gysin. he's not particularly related to graphic design, but in his work (writing and painting), i find a lot of correlations. i found parallels with Deconstruction and the Cut Up, in which both breakdown or change, in order to create something new, if not better, or redifined, something new, nevertheless. he also explores a permutated grid in many of his paintings which stabilizes time sequence in one space. i find that to be huge in graphic design. and, though he wasn't solving graphic design problems of his time, he certainly was out to expand the conscious of our minds, and that, i can take and apply to present day design.

his writing is what fascinates me most. he developed the Cut Up, in which William S. Burroughs made famous. the literal act of cutting text and rearranging them presents a magical transformation of the words, oftentimes defining the future, giving a new perspective on the text and 100% percent of the time creating something refreshed. Gysin said, “The poets are supposed to liberate the words — not chain them into phrases...Poets are meant to make words sing.”

i respect him as a poet, painter, and all-around visionary.

click ://here for the pdf of my paper. 7 pages written, 11 in all including sample images...


W O R K S S I T E D
Weiss, Jason. Back in No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader.
Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.

Férez Kuri, José. Brion Gysin: Tuning in to the Multimedia Age.
London, England: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2003.

Wigley, Mark. The Architecture of Deconstruction.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1993.

Miles, Barry. The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Corso in Paris, 1957—1963. New York, New York: Grove Press, 2000.

Geiger, John. Chapel of Extreme Experience: A Short History of Stroboscopic Light and the Dream Machine. New York, New York: Soft Skull Press, 2003.

Gysin, Brion. “Foreword” The Process. Ed. Robert Palmer.
Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 1987. vii­—xxi.