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Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Loyalty Does Not End With Death


3 Mar 2018
The SUBSTATION 2 Feb - 10 Mar 2018

Over the last five decades English artist, musician and poet Genesis Breyer P-Orridge has become the kind of person that others seek out. For some it might have been during the early 1970s when P-Orridge, and h/er involvement with performance art collective COUM Transmissions, was gathering attention for making use of soiled tampons, blood and milk enemas, urine and hypodermic needles (eventually there were parliamentary inquiries). Maybe it was the mid-1970s when P-Orridge was busy becoming one of the godparents of industrial music via Throbbing Gristle. Or perhaps the moment of resonance came with the electronic pop of Psychic TV and their song 'Godstar,' which, as an homage to Brian Jones, saw devotees bring P-Orridge all kinds of intimate and strange Jones-related paraphernalia. The search could have been related to P-Orridge's worldwide artist collective (or religion or cult, depending how you see it) Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, which at one point had 10,000 members (the dream may be over, but the manifesto is still on point: “THEE OBLIVION OV THEE OBVIOUS”). Or perhaps it was the later period when P-Orridge began h/er Pandrogyny Project with h/er late wife Lady Jaye, which saw the two lovers attempt to become a unified, third being, both spiritually and biologically.

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