At first, what primarily interested me about these guys was the connection with Throbbing Gristle, Coil, Psychic TV, Chris and Cosey, et al. Until, while still in High School, I found the following post in the alt.tasteless archives. Upon reading it, I was enlightened. You have been warned.
From: nikolai@csource.oz.au (nikolai kingsley)
Subject: Genesis P Orridge - my Hero!
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 92 16:38:46 +1000
Newsgroups: alt.tasteless
Summary: art
COUM Transmissions
... are, or were, a performance art group that featured
two of the founding members of Throbbing Gristle:
Genesis P Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti. unlike certain performance artists - or at least, what most people
consider performance artists to be like (i.e. laurie anderson), COUM were slightly different. Genesis recalls:
... I used to do things like stick severed
chickens' heads over my penis, and then try and
masturbate them, whilst pouring maggots over
it... In Los Angeles, in 1976, at the Institute
of Contemporary Arts (LAICA), Cosey and I did a
performance where I was naked. I drank a bottle
of whiskey and stood on a lot of tacks. And then
I gave myself enemas with blood, milk and urine,
and then broke wind so a jet of blood, milk and
urine combined shot across the floor in front of
Chris Burden and assorted visual artists. I then
licked it off the floor, which was a not-clean
concrete floor.
Then I got a 10-inch nail and tried to swallow
it, which made me vomit. Then I licked the vomit
off the floor and Cosey helped me lick the vmoit
off the floor. And she was naked and trying to
sever her vagina to her navel - well, she cut it
from her vagina to her navel with a razor blade,
and she injected blood into her vagina which then
trickled out, and we then sucked the blood from
her vagina into a syringe and injected it into
eggs painted black, which we then tried to eat.
And we vomited again, which we used for enemas.
Then I needed to urinate, so I urinated into a
large glass bottle and drank it all while it was
still warm. (This was all improvised). And then
we gradually crawled to each other, licking the
floor clean ('cause we don't like to leave a
mess, y'know; after all, it's not fair to insult
an art gallery). Chris Burden, who's known for
being outrageous, walked out with his girlfriend,
saying, `This is not art, this is the most
disgusting thing I've ever seen, and these people
are sick.'
Since I posted this writeup, I've discovered the rest of the quote, which follows:
In Amsterdam we did a performance in the red-light district. The people in the theater asked, "What kind of lighting do you want?" and we said, "Oh, just put on all the red lights." Then we played tapes of Charles Manson's LP, Lie, cut-up with soundtracks of trains going through thunderstorms, and we went through all all different kinds of fetishes. Sleazy cut his throat and had to kind of do a tourniquet on his throat, and Cosey and i did this thing of spitting at each other and then licking all the spit off, and then licking each other's genitals, and then having sexual intercourse while her hair was set on fire with candles. There was an audience of around 2,000 people.
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