Industrial Culture and the figure of Genesis P-Orridge

This special evening will introduce in more detail the figure of Genesis P-Orridge, who has not only greatly influenced the alternative subculture of the last 50 years but has become someone who has managed to change identity and break free from gender boxes. The evening will open with a screening of the documentary Other, Like Me: The Oral History of COUM Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle produced by the BBC. At the end, there will be a discussion with cultural historians Nicolas Ballet and Carl Abrahamsson.

*Other, Like Me: The Oral History of COUM Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle */ Marcus Werner Hed, Dan Fox/ USA, UK, 2020 / 80 min. – The documentary traces the emergence of a street theatre called COUM Transmissions in 1970s England. Their performances gradually gave way to work that dealt openly with sex, pornography, and violence. The core of the group consisted of two artists, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti. In the art world, COUM focused on music and began a new phase as the confrontational group Throbbing Gristle. They built their own instruments, ran their own independent label, and challenged the norms of rock performance. Throbbing Gristle invented a whole new genre of electronic music, which they called industrial.

Nicolas Ballet is an art historian who specializes in industrial music, new media, occultism, subcultures, avant-garde, and transhumanism. He received his PhD in 2018 from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where he teaches contemporary art history. His dissertation examines visual culture in industrial music of the 1970s and 1980s in Europe, Japan, and the United States. He has written the two-volume book Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Nekrophile (2018) on the artworks and notebooks of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.

Carl Abrahamsson is a Swedish writer, publisher, filmmaker, photographer, and musician. In his career, he has combined his passion for filmmaking and the esoteric to create a range of films that explore mystery and magic, from the film Into the Devil’s Den, exploring the legacy of Anton LaVey, to the intimate Cinemagician – Conversations with Kenneth Anger, which captures the essence of the iconic filmmaker. His collaborations with Genesis P-Orridge have spawned intriguing works, including Write Your Own Code, a documentary that blends the realms of spoken word and visual art.