A comprehensive online archive of all things Genesis p-orridge,arguably one of the most important icons of alternative culture of the latter quarter of the 20th Century and beyond ...
the essays, interviews, music and magick that has given "CONTROL" headaches for 60-some years now.
*bear with me as i correct spelling and fix formatting on some of this older material!
Gen's upcoming events and Misc.upcoming projects...
GENS MISC. UPCOMING PROJECTS:Heartworm Press are publishing “Collected Lyrics and Poems of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge – Volume One 1961 to 1971. Later they will publish Gen's first novel, written in 1969, “Mrs. Askwith”. Other books will follow.
It’s not always easy to know what to expect from a Psychic TV concert. The band has been many things over the course of its 30-odd year career. There was the early video art/noise collage phase in the ’80s, then there was the acid house techno phase in the ’90s. Earlier in this decade, more was heard about frontperson Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s interest in body modification than about the music of his longest-running band.
Therefore, it comes as a pleasant surprise to learn that the latest incarnation of Psychic TV is one of the best psychedelic rock bands currently active.
We caught a portion of their set at SXSW last year, and it was intriguing enough to warrant a closer look. Did they really play a reverent cover of Funkadelic chestnut “Maggotbrain,” or had the Texas heat simply messed with our heads?
From the first scorching chords of Hawkwind’s classic “Silver Machine,” it was clear that this was the same band – except that a year of subsequent jamming had only made them tighter and more intense. The Echoplex stage lit up with psychedelic lights and projected video manipulations as the band did their best to invoke their own sonic space ritual.
Genesis held the audience in thrall as the focal point of the show. H/she graciously introduced each band member with no trace of the ego one might expect from an individual credited with coining the term “industrial music” and spearheading the independent recording scene way back in the 1970s.
The set was primarily made up of long, moody soundscapes over which P-Orridge intoned spoken mantras about alien brains and lost loves. Genesis seemed genuinely surprised that the audience knew who Can were, before tearing into a spirited cover of “Mother Sky.”
Finally it all came to fruition as the familiar opening notes of “Maggotbrain” rang out. We had indeed not been dreaming; guitarist Jeff Berner can play some serious Eddie Hazel style licks. For an encore, we got another Hawkwind gem – “Hurry On Sundown,” to send us on our way.
Psychic TV have proven that they are not mere dabblers in psychedelic music. They are the real deal. May they continue to guide us onward and upward.
In music, art and film, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is a distinctly singular icon, writes Jo Roberts.
THE boy born Neil Megson in Manchester in 1950 has not been sighted for more than 40 years - not since he made his first album, Early Worm, at the age of 18 under the name Genesis P-Orridge. The formal name change three years later began a lifetime of transformations for Megson, though when Genesis Breyer P-Orridge giggles down the phone from Brooklyn, New York, during a 90-minute interview, you can almost hear the child within.
''We're excited,'' P-Orridge says of an impending Australian visit - the ''we'' being the two people P-Orridge, who also refers to himself as ''s/he'', has become as part of a remarkable life journey that has resulted in the performer becoming one of the world's most influential artists of the past four decades.
P-Orridge has never been to Australia, though numerous endeavours since the early 1970s could easily have brought h/er here: as a founding member of controversial performance art group COUM, once damned as ''wreckers of civilisation''; as a founder of industrial music pioneers Throbbing Gristle; with the band formed in the wake of Throbbing Gristle's 1981 break-up, Psychic TV (PTV); as a visual artist; or as the star of a documentary about a love so powerful, two people chose to become one.
P-Orridge with a photo of late partner Lady Jaye.
True to h/er prolific output as a musician, artist and writer, P-Orridge's Australian visit has a twofold purpose: the debut Australian performance of Psychic TV, or PTV3 as it's known, as part of the Adelaide Festival, and a screening and Q&A for the doco The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, shown at last year's Melbourne International Film Festival.
As part of the Dreamers music program of ''innovators, icons and iconoclasts'', of which former Melbourne International Jazz Festival director Sophia Brous is curator, Psychic TV will play one show only, of all-new material. There will be no back catalogue of PTV and definitely no Throbbing Gristle - P-Orridge is suing TG's two other surviving members, Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter, after they allowed the release of the band's back catalogue without P-Orridge's knowledge or permission - or share of proceeds.
''It's outrageous. They didn't even send me a copy of the contract or anything. Their only excuse for not paying me is that they don't like me any more,'' s/he says.
P-Orridge says the songs PTV3 will perform in Adelaide ''are kind of a homage to my teenage years and the inspirations that made me want to start to create music'', with radical versions of tracks by artists including Funkadelic, Can and Hawkwind.
But while the PTV3 show is an Adelaide exclusive, P-Orridge's appearance at the screening of The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye is a Melbourne one, ahead of its cinematic release in the US next month
Lady Jaye, nee Jacqueline Breyer, was a New York performance artist and dominatrix with whom P-Orridge began a relationship in the 1990s.
P-Orridge's friend and mentor, the writer and artist Brion Gysin, introduced P-Orridge to the ''cut-up'' art technique of the early 20th-century Surrealists. It was a theory P-Orridge applied to the pandrogyny project he undertook with Lady Jaye, as they attempted to merge their identities through cosmetic surgery, hormone therapy and matching clothes and behaviours. Filmed over seven years by Marie Losier, the doco follows the couple's journey through art, music and liberation from their ''flesh suitcases'', up to and beyond Lady Jaye's sudden death in 2007. Since she ''dropped her body'', as P-Orridge calls it, he has absorbed her identity to become ''we'' and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.
As confronting as the pair's transformation is, the core of the film remains the couple's deep devotion to each other.
''The first year [after Jaye's death] we don't really remember,'' P-Orridge says. ''We got so skinny that even Lady Jaye's clothing - and she had a 22-inch waist - was loose on me. We were skeletal.''
It wasn't until Losier asked P-Orridge if s/he wanted to finish the film that s/he was able to regroup. ''I thought, 'Well, Lady Jaye's greatest desire was to be remembered as a great love affair, so we have to finish it'.''
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Psychic TV play the Adelaide Festival Centre on Saturday, March 3, at 7pm (tickets $29 at adelaidefestival.com.au, or 13 12 46). On Monday, March 5, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye will screen at ACMI Cinemas, Federation Square, at 9.15pm, followed by an audience Q&A with P-Orridge. Tickets $30-$35 at acmi.net.au
Marie Losier-US FILM RELEASE The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye-ADOPT FILMS
ADOPT FILMS
Adoptfilms.net
ADOPTFILMS/US release
THE BALLAD March 8th, 2011
CLEARVIEW CINEMA-
CHELSEA/NYC
Made over the course of seven years, this brilliantly realized portrait explores legendary musician and artist Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV and h/er romance with Lady Jaye, an artist and dominatrix. This often touching film focuses on their Pandrogyne project, where they sought to become two parts of the same person through body modification surgery. Filmed in 16mm and experimental in its technique, Losier’s film is a marvelously crafted work of art. Winner of the Berlin Film Festival Teddy and Caligary Award for Best Documentary. (BAM note)
Adopt Films, LLC •
2-01 50th Avenue, #29J
Long Island City, NY 11101
Office: (718) 392-2783
US Release / Dates and Theaters
==========
-Landmark Embarcadero/San Francisco, CA-March 9/15
-Landmark Shattuck/Berkeley, CA-March 9 to 15
-Camera 3/San Jose, CA-March 9 to15
-Landmark Kendall Sq./Cambridge, MA-March 23 to 29
-Landmark "E" Street Cinemas/Washington, DC-March 23 to 29
-Landmark Ritz at the Bourse/Philadelphia, PA-March 23 to 29
-Crest/Sacramento, CA-March 30 to April 5
-Walker Art Center/Minneapolis, MN-April 4
-Landmark Lagoon/Minneapolis, MN-April 6 to12
-Cedar Lee/Cleveland, OH-April 6 to12
-Regal Arbor/Austin, TX-April 6 to12
-Regal Tara/Atlanta, GA-April 6 to12
-Cable Car/Providence, RI-April 6 to12
-Landmark Nuart/W. Los Angeles, CA-April 13 to 19
-Camelview Cinemas/Scottsdale, AZ- April 20 to 26
-Wexner Center for the Arts/Columbus, OH- April 20 to 26
-Denver Film Center at Colfax/Denver, CO- April 27 to May 3rd
-Angelika Film Center/Dallas, TX-May 4 to 10
-Kahala/Honolulu, HI-May 4 to 10
-Tivoli/Kansas City, MO-May 4 to 10
-Detroit Film Theatre/Detroit, MI-May 25
Marie Losier - The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye-USA RELEASE March 8th-NYC-ADOPT FILMS
WFMU, One of our favorite radio stations will be starting their annual fun drive next week. For those of you who are unaware, WFMU is a free form, listener sponsored radio station which has been very supportive of GBP-O related projects over the years. On Brian Turner's stellar and intriguing show from 3-6pm on Tuesday, February 28th, the grand prize will be Genesis' very own tank top bearing the message "Stop Looking At My Tits". Often worn and often photographed, anyone who pledges $100 or more will be in the running to win this item IF they make specific mention that they want it. The hotline is 201 209 9368. For more info about the station and the fund drive, visit: http://www.wfmu.org/
INVISIBLE-EXPORTS is pleased to present I’m Mortality, the second solo exhibition at the gallery of new works by BREYER P-ORRIDGE.
Genesis BREYER P-ORRIDGE is one of the most rigorous and relentless agents of the postwar Anglo-American vanguard, interrogating the meaning and substance of identity in a peerless half-century program of willful reincarnation and shape-shifting. Embracing the body as not simply the vessel but the site of the avant-garde impulse, BREYER P-ORRIDGE has reinvented and reintroduced herself again and again—as Fluxus pioneer, groundbreaking performance artist, inventor of industrial music, "wrecker of civilization," and, most recently, as pandrogyne, in a romantic project of identity and gender merging with her now-late wife, Lady Jaye. In her new body of work, conceived to be a kind of “inter-dimensional” collaboration between the material and the immaterial world, BREYER P-ORRIDGE probes the limits of each of those enterprises, drawing on the consonant and indigenous traditions of shape-shifting and reincarnation encountered during recent trips to Nepal: a practice born at an intersection of Mortality and Immortality as experienced as biology and as consciousness.
Genesis BREYER P-ORRIDGE (born in Manchester, England in 1950) was a member of the Kinetic action group Exploding Galaxy/Transmedia Exploration from 1969-1970. S/he conceived of and founded the seminal British performance art group Coum Transmissions in 1969. Her work has been exhibited at The Tate Britain, the ICA London, The Serpentine Gallery, London, the ICA Philadelphia, the Musee D’Art Moderne, Paris among many others. Her complete archives are part of the Tate’s permanent collection. Lady Jaye BREYER P-ORRIDGE (born in Brooklyn, New York in 1969) was a practicing nurse, dominatrix and vital member of the East Village performance scene of pre-millennial New York.
"We view Breyer P-Orridge as a separate person who is both of us, Neither of us take credit for the work, the work is a melding of both of our ideas which we would not have had singly. Both of us are in all of our art. That third being, Breyer P-Orridge, is always present." —LADY JAYE, 2003
From Edely of PTV on the fothcoming "THANK YOU" redux
In time for our upcoming Australian debut, PTV3 presents mini version of our entirely original new song about our Beloved Lady Jaye called "THANK YOU". Edited to now fit on a 7" record, this intensely moving and psychedelic track is split on to 2 sides as "Thank You (Parts I & II)". Utilizing recycled colored vinyl, each slab is completely unique and comes housed in a recycled craft paper jacket emblazoned with a removable embroidered patch attached to the front cover. Includes an 8 page booklet featuring handwritten Breyer P-Orridge lyrics (stamped on page 5 with the BP-O seal of authenticity) as well as 2 postcards designed exclusively for this release (one design: one for mailing and one for keeping). Each package was lovingly and assembled by hand. This release, limited to 230 copies only (hand numbered on the back), is the second in a new series of Angry Love Productions "Handmade" vinyl records. Please note that the image shows variation of vinyl color and your purchase will contain ONE slab of vinyl. Available at our forthcoming Los Angeles and Australian gigs as well as on the webshoppe!
P-Orridge with a photo of late partner Lady Jaye.
