Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission St
415.978.2787
This event has passed.
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FLicKeR
- When
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Thursday Aug 7, 2008 (7:30pm)
- Where
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- Price
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$8
- Links
"We must storm the citadels of enlightenment. The means are at hand," William S. Burroughs wrote to his compatriot, polymath Brion Gysin. Burroughs was referring to Gysin's dream machine — a rotating, lamp-like device whose strobe effect sent its user into an intense state similar to lucid dreaming. Nik Sheehan's hypnotic documentary FlicKeR looks at the machine's long half-life in underground culture since Gysin and Burroughs first stared into "the drugless high" in the late '50s. Iggy Pop, Lee Ranaldo, and Marianne Faithfull all praise the machine, though their hosannas further underscore the fact that Gysin was unable to successfully capitalize on his invention. Storming the citadels would have to wait.
