https://elephant.art/remembering-the-flawed-but-pioneering-genesis-breyer-p-orridge-throbbing-gristle-carl-abrahamsson-sacred-intent-29032020/
It feels pretty poignant that just over a week after the announcement that the book Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Sacred Intent was to be published (timed to mark P-Orridge’s seventieth birthday on 22 February) came the announcement of their death on 14 March. Though, in some senses, it also seems partly fitting—the old “what they would have wanted” cliché. The artist, musician, pandrogeny pioneer and cultural provocateur led a life in which things rarely were explained by simple coincidence.
The book brings together three decades of conversations between Genesis P-Orridge and Swedish author (and Trapart publisher) Carl Abrahamsson, and demonstrates beyond doubt the artist’s unique knack for wringing symbolism and meaning from events, meetings, ideas and sounds that others would miss. P-Orridge formed a life and practice from reassembling the broken fragments, that make up a life, a song or an image, into entirely new entities.
Such reassembly of broken pieces calls to mind the cut-up techniques revered by artists like Brion Gysin and William Burroughs. It is emblematic of the belief that the union of two separate entities to create a third new one—be that in a collage image, a sound piece, or indeed a relationship or gender identity (as with P-Orridge and Jacqueline “Lady Jaye” Breyer’s pandrogeny project, as documented in The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye by Marie Losier)—can be applied to life and death, perhaps, as much as art. That is, if we separate life and art, something it seems P-Orridge was unwilling or unable to do. Indeed, the art and music collective COUM Transmissions that s/he co-founded was a staunch proponent of art’s purpose in society being, quite simply, “art as life”.
“It demonstrates beyond doubt the artist’s unique knack for wringing symbolism and meaning from sounds that others would miss”
Perhaps the coincidence of the birthday and the death of a cultural icon colliding was the ultimate conclusion of the book’s title: the “sacred intent” that underscored P-Orridge’s foundational respect for a patchwork of spiritual and “magickal” worldviews. As the artist stated in a 1988 interview published in the book, quoting Burroughs, “People think that all they have to do to write a good novel is to do a cut-up. But the skill is knowing what to cut up and how much to cut up and where to put each section.”
For those unfamiliar with P-Orridge, s/he founded the music and performance art project COUM Transmissions in 1969, which unexpectedly hit tabloid headlines in ways few such esoteric, experimental or extreme practices have. This was thanks to its inclusion in the Prostitution exhibition at the ICA in 1976, which showcased musician and COUM cofounder Cosey Fanni Tutti’s pornographic work, including a glass-encased used tampons, syringes, rusty knives and other shocking artefacts. It was enough for Tory MP Nicholas Fairbairn to brand them the “wreckers of Western civilization”. When the press caught on, COUM cut up reviews of their show and displayed them
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