Woolwich, London, and Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh
Unboxed (formerly the Festival of Brexit) offers a free trip inside your own head courtesy of a flashing light technique pioneered in the 1960s. Our writer is addicted
The entire population of Britain is to be given LSD in a government-sponsored attempt to cheer us up after the pandemic and make us forget about inflation. Well, almost. Dreamachine, one of 10 national projects in Unboxed UK – formerly known as the Festival of Brexit – is as close to state-funded hallucinogens as you can get.
This is a free trip inside your own head. It’s a 21st-century version – fully credited – of a psychedelic technique patented in the 60s by Brion Gysin, friend and collaborator of Naked Lunch author William Burroughs. The insight Gysin came up with, while smoking kif in Morocco and popping pills in Paris, is that being exposed to a simple flashing white light while you have your eyes closed can induce intense visual hallucinations. Light flickering at between eight and 13 flashes a second synchronises with the brain’s alpha waves to set off this freaky phenomenon.
