Wishes & Dreams at the New Museum

Eu desejo o seu desejo / I Wish Your Wish (2003) is installed in the lobby gallery as part of the exhibition "Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other". Visitors are invited to select ribbons printed with a wish to tie around their wrists. When the ribbon falls off, tradition has it that one's wish will be fulfilled. Visitors may write another wish and place it in the empty hole. This work of art is based on a similar practice that takes place at the church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim (Our Lord of the Good End) in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

You can participate in the "I Wish Your Wish" online here
Also, a forensic artist can draw a portrait based on your description of your "First Love." You can particpate online here

Through September 19.

Brion Gysin introduced William S. Burroughs, Jr. to the "Cut Up" Method. Brion Gysin, born John Clifford Brian Gysin, 19 January 1916, Taplow, England, Died July 13, 1986 (aged 70), Paris, France . Gysin was

a painter, writer, poet, and performance artist. With Ian Somerville he invented the Dreamachine, a flicker device designed as an art object to be viewed with the eyes closed. It was in painting, however, that Gysin devoted his greatest efforts, creating calligraphic works inspired by Japanese and Arabic scripts. Burroughs later stated that "Brion Gysin was the only man I ever respected." Although the "Dream Machine" exhibit feautres many of Gysin's paintings and drawings, works produced by the  "cut up" method -- and by extension, William S. Burroughs-- loom large here.

In a 1966 interview by Conrad Knickerbocker for The Paris Review, William S. Burroughs explained that Brion Gysin was, to his knowledge, "the first to create cut-ups":

INTERVIEWER: How did you become interested in the cut-up technique? BURROUGHS: A friend, Brion Gysin, an American poet and painter, who has lived in Europe for thirty years, was, as far as I know, the first to create cut-ups. His cut-up poem, Minutes to Go, was broadcast by the BBC and later published in a pamphlet. I was in Paris in the summer of 1960; this was after the publication there of Naked Lunch. I became interested in the possibilities of this technique, and I began experimenting myself. Of course, when you think of it, The Waste Land was the first great cut-up collage, and Tristan Tzara had done a bit along the same lines. Dos Passos used the same idea in 'The Camera Eye' sequences in USA. I felt I had been working toward the same goal; thus it was a major revelation to me when I actually saw it being done.

The exhibit also includes films, such as Antony Balch's notable 1963 film Towers Open Fire, and, 1966, The Cut Ups which use the cut up method (and feature a brief clip of street signs from Clark and Hicks Streets, circa early 1960s).


The exhibit also features a working model of Gysin's and Somerville's Dream Machine. The full experience of The Dream Machine is gained kneeling on a cushion in a darkened room, staring with closed eyes, 5"-8" from the device. After a few moments, you may begin to experience some eyelid patterns based on the movement of the device and the light source. To get a flavor of the Dream Machine, check this link

More on Gysin here. Through October 3.

The New Museum. 223 Bowery, at Prince Street, New York, NY