Coum Transmissions was the performance act
Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti , and various co-conspirators, ran
through the early to mid '70s. Barely advertised, this showing of Coum videos packed
the Participant Inc. gallery with viewers uncertain of what they'd
come for.
As P-Orridge noted in his opening
remarks, they wanted to bring the body into art and use the repetition
of mundane tasks to break through to some more intense existence.
Like Linda Montano and Chris Burden in the US, they were interesed in
endurance pieces and it's difficult for a movie, unless it involves
eight hours of staring at the Empire State Building, to evoke the
tedium and sustaining powers of the performers. In other words, the
films weren't magnetizing rather than boring, though P-Orridge seemed
to think the audience might not have the patience for them, warning
that they weren't a Law and Order episode. No they weren't.
Coumdensaton Mucus from 1975 featured Genesis dressed as a young
school lad and an even younger looking Peter Christopherson.
P-Orridge described it as an improvised lecture for students at Royal
College of Art on the art world theme "You fuck me and I'll give you a
show." The soundtrack was by both of them and Genesis described it as
in many ways the first Throbbing Gristle recording, drawing from microphones planted
around the school recording conversations and sounds. The
performances were for the camera, taking place in tight spaces with
little movement. For the first half of the film, a deadpan
P-Orridge, sitting in a corner legs spread, gradually pulls down his
pants, masturbates, gives himself a milk enema, strokes himself with a
candle, inserts a tampon to absorb the milk, sucks on the tampon,
drinks milk from a bottle then pees in the bottle. After an
interval with a page from a gay porn mag next to a medical image
of man with a bandaged groin, Peter Christopherson is shown standing
behind a desk. He rolls up his sleeve, wincing as he exposes a
long wound, which in the grainy video quality isn't quite obviously
fake. He sticks a nail in it, then starts to sew it shut after using a
pincer to close the wound, by which point the wound clearly isn't
real. The movie ends with P-Orridge in his corner.
P-Orridge talked afterwards about the questions the film left: was the
wound real?; can a fake wound hurt?; was the hurt pleasurable?
Evidently, the video was used as proof the Arts Council that
Performance Art didn't exist.
Music for Stocking Top and Stare Case (1974) was a different affair,
played out before a live audience at the Royal College of Art over a
twelve hour period. Genesis, Cosey and and a blindfolded man named Tom
Reindeerwork wandered about the stage while John Gunni Busck
(John Lacey) played an evocative, often beautiful accompaniment on a
homemade synethesizer later bought by Chris Carter for TG. Stage
center stood a pyramid of four poles beneath which were stencilled
arrows, a paper roll, and a "clock" consisting of a stick with curled
ends mounted a spindle and given the occasional twirl by P-Orridge. To
liven up the screening, P-Orridge read from a document of his thoughts,
maybe from the time maybe later, carping at Cosey for not noticing the
blindfolded man, wondering why he was thinking of his mother as he
masturbated, admiring his clock. On film he was Buster Brown in a
schoolgirl outfit and straw boater, kicking his legs on a swing. The
cardboard facade of a house stood in for domesticity and the whole
thing had a lackadaisical Sunday afternoon feel. There was no
theater, no interaction, each performer isolated, like figures in one
of Balthus's paintings, cunning children bored at home. Introducing it,
P-Orridge mentioned that waking up means having to pretend to be a
human again for another 15 hours. "And what am I going to be
doing? Stuff."
The children's costumes, the swing, the generally homey atmosphere
create a weirdly nostalgic atmosphere. Like Balthus' painting, you
can't be sure you'd want to be in the suffocating rooms with them, but
there's a definite allure. P-Orridge remains blankly Keatonish
throughout, concentrating on his tasks but aware of the camera.
Cosey seems to belong in the environment, sleepy and at ease.
What violence the videos include is pretend, fake wounds and blood, and
Christopherson looks more like he's stitching a boot than his own arm.
The audience was a little shy about asking questions afterwards, but
P-Orridge ended the evening commenting that Coum had done very little
recording of their events and he'd thought until recently the two video
tapes were lost. Selling beautiful pictures had never been their goal.
But was that ever in doubt?
Coum Transmissions Films, Sunday Nov. 6 at Participant Inc.
- Written by: Paul McRandle
- Parent Category: Reviews
- Category: Exhibitions
- Hits: 23681