Brion Gysin, “Journal,” 1969. Brion Gysin Collection, 1939-1980.

Brion Gysin, the Beat artist perhaps most memorable for inventing the Dreamachine, spent his years traveling the world exploring different cultures, most notably Tangier, Morocco. Hailed as a paradise for members of the Beat Generation, Tangier offered artists and writers an escape from the rigid norms of Euro-Western society, providing social, artistic, and sexual freedom. Beat interaction with Tangier resulted in a dynamic microcosm of artists intent on experiencing the exotic, bestowing foreign lands with mystical properties that oftentimes overlooked the realities of the cultures they toured. In the journal Gysin kept during his time in Tangier, we get powerful lines like: “The [scratched out] is with us; as a little reminder that this is, after all, the great and terrible continent of Africa,” that give us a glimpse of the artist’s intimate impressions of the land.