Genesis P-Orridge: Provocateur of the Body

November 11, 2018 9:23 AM

Having a physical body is a luxury we don’t often get. We’ve not squandered it. (SLNYT)

“We know that Neil Andrew Megson decided to create an artist, Genesis P-Orridge, and insert it into the culture. Some people take their lives and turn them into the equivalent of a work of art. So we invented Genesis, but Gen forgot Neil, really. Does that person still exist somewhere, or did Genesis gobble him up? We don’t know the answer. But thank you, Neil.”

posted by The Hamms Bear (25 comments total)

*makes a weird sort of "E" shape with his hands and fingers, then flashing two fingers, then three*
posted by loquacious at 9:26 AM on November 11, 2018

P-Orridge prefers genderless pronouns, usually first person plural, but is O.K. with female pronouns. Her life, she said, was...

The interviewer asked for their preferred pronouns, then continued with pronouns known to be second best. Is this a deliberate insult?
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 9:38 AM on November 11, 2018 [6 favorites]

Had me up to the Nazi imagery. Current events (whatever is the opposite of notwithstanding).
posted by Glinn at 10:00 AM on November 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

The interviewer asked for *our* preferred pronouns, you mean. Even we might have found it slightly grammatically confusing had he acceded to that in the context of a New York Times article, albeit perhaps in an enjoyable way.
posted by sfenders at 10:01 AM on November 11, 2018 [11 favorites]

a complex, fascinating, troubling person who made complex, fascinating, troubling art. go easy gen.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 10:15 AM on November 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

Yeah, there was a time when I could and would talk a lot of wild shit talk about Gen that was less than positive, but not today. Likely never again. They will be missed as a force for change.

I do note that it was pretty well known in industrial/post punk circles that Genesis was very problematic on an interpersonal level with a lot of people. The part they gloss over about them being emotionally/physically abusive is very likely true.

And even though I was a TOPY/PTV fan and hanger's on and part of that scene in the later days - Genesis is not someone I've ever thought of as either a hero or role model.

Genesis is more like a force of nature or even a natural disaster waiting to happen that one should be aware of for personal safety reasons. Imagine a landslide of glitter, rust, blood and bodily fluids, except sometimes it slides uphill against gravity. Or sometimes it takes to the sky and looms there as a nebulous cloud, raining piss and blood. Sometimes it's suddenly a perfect vacuum and everything gets sucked into the void and re-arranged.

Like a natural disaster, Genesis is complicated. Are they a good human? A bad human? I still don't really know, and usually I know. Genesis makes you question your concepts of what a good or bad human is. Or even the definition of good and bad. Or even your concepts of what is human.
posted by loquacious at 10:32 AM on November 11, 2018 [20 favorites]

Very good Love + Radio episode from 2017
posted by stevil at 10:49 AM on November 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

Interesting article. I spent the day with Genesis back in the 80’s at their daughters birthday party. Gen was really sweet and showed me the collection of originals from Burroughs and others in their library. I haven’t really kept up since then so nice to read a recap even if it’s full of horrible news.
posted by misterpatrick at 10:50 AM on November 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

And she was in love, with a woman she’d met in Granada a few years back. “We certainly didn’t expect it, at our age,” she said. “What a beautiful surprise it was to be in love again. She’s 28. It’s ridiculous, but what can you do, man?”

In the last year, an old bandmate and girlfriend, known as Cosey Fanni Tutti, accused P-Orridge in a memoir of being physically and emotionally abusive. P-Orridge said she had not seen the book, but denied the allegations. “Whatever sells a book sells a book,” she said.

Wow, such an original approach to a transgressive lifestyle.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 11:10 AM on November 11, 2018 [13 favorites]

Genesis and Jello seem to occupy the same space in my head: hugely influential, disruptive in a positive way, and somewhat troubling.
posted by sydnius at 11:27 AM on November 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

Thanks for posting this. I'm fascinated by the relationship between Genesis and Lady Jayne, and especially by Lady Jayne. In all her imagery she looks so... normal, and pleasant, like she's just along for the ride. It's hard for my brain to wrap around the idea that she was equally engaged, equally an initiator.

Here are some of her friends talking on a forum right around her death.
posted by wym at 12:08 PM on November 11, 2018

I got to have dinner with Genesis after a show once (on someone else's dime), and it was a pretty grand time. Quite a bit of fun to be one of the token weirdos basically invited along to offset the establishment art crowd who'd organized the talk.

I still really don't understand the appeal of ketamine.
posted by aspersioncast at 12:25 PM on November 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

I still really don't understand the appeal of ketamine.

It's pretty cool when you realize the air around you is composed of crystalline pieces of jello. Wiggling sliding jello universe subtly refracting shifting warping calm wiggling.
posted by aramaic at 12:39 PM on November 11, 2018 [7 favorites]

I hadn't realized that Douglas Rushkoff was directly involved with Psychic TV. The character of "Renn A. Sanz" in Ecstasy Club seemed like such an obvious caricature of Genesis that it's a little odd to hear them described as friends.
posted by Slothrup at 1:20 PM on November 11, 2018 [5 favorites]

I hope this person finds peace, but I also hope they sincerely atone for the harm they’ve caused others.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 1:33 PM on November 11, 2018

I hope this person finds peace, but I also hope they sincerely atone for the harm they’ve caused others

Harm is a relative thing. Just ask a Koch brother.

Blood on the Floor
posted by Max Power at 3:38 PM on November 11, 2018

Genesis is over two decades older than me and *I* don't know if I could realistically date someone who was 28. I realize that's the least outlandish thing she's done, but still. It does make me wonder about the power difference in their relationship, and in the marriage to Lady Jayne. I suppose that a 28-year-old could walk away from a dying person nearing 70 any time if she wanted, though.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:54 PM on November 11, 2018

loquacious: Genesis is more like a force of nature or even a natural disaster waiting to happen that one should be aware of for personal safety reasons. Imagine a landslide of glitter, rust, blood and bodily fluids, except sometimes it slides uphill against gravity. Or sometimes it takes to the sky and looms there as a nebulous cloud, raining piss and blood. Sometimes it's suddenly a perfect vacuum and everything gets sucked into the void and re-arranged.

Damn, that's some fine writing, right there, loq.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 6:45 PM on November 11, 2018 [4 favorites]

Acting like a selfish asshole isn’t transgressive. It’s pathetically and recognizably human. It’s banal to the point of parody. Self-parody.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:56 AM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]

The interviewer asked for their preferred pronouns, then continued with pronouns known to be second best. Is this a deliberate insult?

Nope. The problem is that the NYT's style doesn’t allow for the singular “they.”
posted by holborne at 8:00 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]

I was a bit confused by the pronoun description, because I wasn’t sure if GP-O preferred the plural (presumably from the Pandrogeny Project) but was OK with “she” as a singular, or whether they wanted people to use first person plural all the time, which would be genuinely confusing, and a bit of a fuck you to trans and non-binary people trying to get proper pronoun recognition.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:36 AM on November 12, 2018

I do note that it was pretty well known in industrial/post punk circles that Genesis was very problematic on an interpersonal level with a lot of people.

Yeah, I read this piece over the weekend and it reminded me again of how many mixed feelings I have about Genesis. OTOH, if you were a certain kind of weirdo who encountered them back in the day, you're probably hugely in their debt to their ideas on music and art and aesthetics and just the possibilities of living. OTOH, Gen was always the sort to go too far just to see how far they can go. And even at the time there was always this stuff that just seemed like narcissism, or simple abuse, or juvenile button-pushing for its own sake. But in that respect, Gen's not any different from a lot of the 80's and 90's era "industrial culture" dudes who in retrospect seem as much progenitors of a kind of 4chanish right/libertarianish art-as-nihilism as anything else. Force of nature or just a human who's always believed they can do whatever the fuck they want? I don't know, either. Anyway, Genesis-P-Orridge. Definitely my #1 problematic fave.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:44 AM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]

“We know that Neil Andrew Megson decided to create an artist, Genesis P-Orridge, and insert it into the culture. Some people take their lives and turn them into the equivalent of a work of art. So we invented Genesis, but Gen forgot Neil, really. Does that person still exist somewhere, or did Genesis gobble him up? We don’t know the answer. But thank you, Neil.”

I do really like this line, tho. It captures perfectly everything that's always felt thrilling and frightening about Genesis-P-Orridge.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:55 AM on November 12, 2018 [2 favorites]

But in that respect, Gen's not any different from a lot of the 80's and 90's era "industrial culture" dudes who in retrospect seem as much progenitors of a kind of 4chanish right/libertarianish art-as-nihilism as anything else.

And some of them may even have prefigured today's "ironic Nazism is still Nazism" trend -- I'm looking at you, Boyd Rice and Death in June.
posted by Slothrup at 9:18 AM on November 12, 2018 [9 favorites]

Yeah, Boyd Rice was one of the ones I was thinking of in particular.

My own mixed feelings aside, here's Morgan Page on Tuesday's London Psychic TV show

At the Psychic TV show last night, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge - once called the most dangerous artist in Britain - instructed us to hug and kiss each other, strangers, and we did.

She talked about how we could let go of our fear of each other, and really see each other, and I truly believed her. I think we all crave even a moment of utopian (you-TOPY-an, as Gen might put it) thinking in these very bleak times.
— @morganmpage

posted by octobersurprise at 7:48 AM on November 15, 2018