Coum Transmissions

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Coum Transmissions (CT) was a subcultural group of British musicians , underground filmmakers , action and conceptual artists who drew media attention to themselves in the early 1970s with aggressive, provocative and shockingly disturbing performances and who are among the pioneers of later industrial . Based on fragmentary ideas of Dada , Neo-Dada , Fluxus , Merry Pranksters , as well as writings by William S. Burroughs , Aleister Crowley or Brion Gysin and against the background of the beginning punk movement , the group pursued the non-conformist goal of removing any limits to the conventional understanding of art to question and to break with social (and human ) conventions and norms as well as their aesthetics . The main actors of the group were essentially Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti , two of the founding members of the later industrial music group Throbbing Gristle .

history

COUM Transmissions was founded around the end of 1969 in Hull , Yorkshire as an "art band project" with a changing line-up around P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti. Originating from the performance group Transmedia Explorations , the strange, eccentric troupe was composed largely of avant-garde writers, musicians and underground filmmakers and consisted of both intellectual and criminal- subversive members. According to its own legend , an "inner voice" is said to have whispered the term COUM to Genesis P-Orridge . From the very beginning, COUM Transmissions were geared towards an anarchic- radical course of confrontation with their audience - or the public.

First actions

The first appearance under the name COUM Transmissions took place in December 1969 in Hull. The line-up initially consisted of John Krivine, Geoff Pettifer, John Shapeero and Genesis P-Orridge, who at that time was still operating under his real name Neil Andrew Megson . At the time, the friends lived in an old warehouse in Hull, which they called "Ho-Ho-Funhouse" and which was not only a home but also a podium for their first "Dadaist" appearances. The following year, Christine Carol Newby joined the group that P-Orridge nicknamed "Cosmosis" and later shortened to "Cosey". Throughout 1970 the cast consisted of Ian "Spydee Gasmantel" Evetts, Ray Harvey, Tim Poston, Haydn Robb and Genesis P-Orridge. Their first major concert - CT's activities were still focused on music to date - took place on January 10, 1971 under the title Disintegration of Fact in Hull. Three months later, on April 18th, CT appeared for the first time with a session on a radio show on the BBC .

Under the title Absolute Elsewhere , COUM held their first street performance in July 1971, which was stopped by the police for causing public nuisance . From this point at the latest, the group was under official observation, especially since some members had already become suspicious of drug offenses. In September "Cosmosis" (Cosey Fanni Tutti) appeared on CT for the first time. In the following month COUM were hired by the band Hawkwind as opening act for a concert at St. George's Hall in Bradford , and as a result, they were increasingly noticed by the music press. In addition to Cosmosis / Cosey, Babbling Brook and John Barry Smith were now part of the cast of the group.

In November 1971 the legendary radio DJ John Peel COUM devoted a feature in the magazine Disc and Musicecho , which mainly dealt with the unusually dissonant - atonal music of the strange new "band", which in stark contrast to the fading, harmony-conscious swinging Sixties - hippie era.

1972–1973 the group, whose media presence now consisted only of Genesis P-Orridge and its numerous "sub-projects" such as the so-called "Ministry for Social Insecurity", made several mostly self-financed appearances. In 1973, COUM Transmissions merged with the Skinheads and Hells Angels of Hull. Around this time, Cosey Fanni Tutti and P-Orridge moved to London in order to establish contacts with the local art scene.

"The Death Factory"

In the East End of London , Cosey and Genesis found shelter with friends in an empty “dead” factory on Martello Street, on the site of which plague victims were previously burned and buried and which now housed a studio. Due to the history of the building, the name Death Factory was soon found as the headquarters for future projects. From October 1972 to August 1973 the exhibition " Fluxus show" took place in London , so that an "ideological bridge" could be quickly established between the actions of CT and those of the Fluxus artists. Most of the contacts arose from a network of correspondence with other artists initiated by P-Orridge , from which a form of Mail Art soon developed. Since Fluxus was a novelty in England at that time, COUM Transmissions took the opportunity to establish their project in this context in the London art scene. In 1974 Peter Christopherson joined the group. Christopherson, who studied theater design and programming , was an asset to CT because of his technical know-how and interests in extreme literature and extreme sexual experience. At the same time, CT wrote a manifesto in which they legitimized their own future “self-awareness processes” in front of an audience: freely based on Aleister Crowley's Thelema law “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” (Do what you want is supposed to be the whole law) Cosey Fanni Tutti and P-Orridge staged ritual- voyeuristic sex acts in front of invited guests with running cameras and tape recorders . In the following years it was, how any - - preferred sexual taboo breaking and all "standards" soften respectively absurdity to lead and then mixed gradually and the gender roles of the actors. For example, the thematization of transsexuality flowed into the performances, with P-Orridge already anticipating his later transformation into a woman. At that time, Fanni Tutti was working as a nude model for fetish clothing and as a striptease dancer. To avoid the suspicion that it was just a perverse "sex show" and to get further cultural funding, CT unceremoniously propagated their actions as " esoteric art rituals."

Throbbing Gristle and Industrial Records

Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, who, thanks to his stage and technical experience, knew how to create splatter effects that looked real , was increasingly responsible for bloody, gruesome and sadistic productions from 1975 onwards, some of which took on the character of a snuff film : this is how apparent castrations became or killing rituals simulated in front of the camera. In the same year Chris Carter joined COUM Transmissions. Carter dealt preferentially with light shows and synthesizers and complemented the group with technical and musical knowledge. With Carter's entry into the group, the founding of Throbbing Gristle and the accompanying Industrial Records as a label for "musical side projects" are combined at the same time . The term "Industrial Music" was introduced in this context by Genesis P-Orridge and Monte Cazazza , but the label "Industrial Records" was only registered as a trademark later, in January 1977.

Both Fanni Tutti as well as P-Orridge and Cazazza were on the index of law enforcement officers at this point in time and so a new concept in the “more neutral” and more commercially attractive guise of a music group was sought under the slogan “Entertainment through pain” Arch to the beginnings of COUM Transmissions.

Radicalization of art

Starting with relatively unpretentious conceptual installation art , such as the Window-Music (1973), in which passers-by at a window on photocells a tone generator triggered, the random noise sequences generated (Throbbing Gristle experimented later with the psychoacoustic effect of white noise and other frequency modulations on the human Body by means of noise and signal generators ), the artistic concept of CT soon rose to extremes due to the actors' arbitrary ego-relatedness, regardless of any psychological sensations of their audience or their participation.

The shocking actions of COUM Transmissions soon hardly differed from those of the Viennese actionists such as Günter Brus or Otto Muehls : The group relentlessly staged and filmed numerous orgiastic spectacles of blood, vomit, urine and sperm and annoyed with violent demonstrations of hardcore sex and fistfucking films to occult black magic rites , violence, pedophilia and death, thus equating abnormality with normality. The symbol of COUM Transmissions represented a sagging penis after orgasm, to which sarcastic slogans such as “We guarantee disappointment” or “Your local dirty band” were used.

The “Prostitution” campaign in the ICA

The ICA in London

One of the last actions of COUM Transmissions and at the same time the most sensational one took place on October 18, 1976 under the title Prostitution in the renowned Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London : to the drastic exhibits such as glasses with bloody preparations, intestines, feces, Maggots, tampons, dildos, chains, whips, etc. Cosey acted as a stripper to demonstrate hard pornography and BDSM practices. Incidentally, u. a. the musicians of the newly founded punk rock group The Slits and Billy Idol with the group Chelsea (later known as Generation X ). At the opening of the exhibition there was beer instead of wine and so the event ended in a collective, drug-laden, drunkenness. With this event, COUM Transmissions caused a solid national media scandal that even the British Parliament subsequently dealt with. With the statement "prostitution which meant as a paradigm of general conditions under capitalism, FOR BOTH men and women" (prostitution was as a paradigm of the general conditions under capitalism meant for both men and women.) Ergo is prostitution nothing but normal paid “sexual work”, ie a “job like any other”, denigrated CT the basic family and social values ​​of conservative Great Britain at the time. The group was classified by MPs as "Wreckers of Civilization" (looters / destroyers of civilization); the name was soon rumored by the media and finally adopted by CT itself and, as a result, by Throbbing Gristle.

"Cease to Exist" - The end of COUM Transmissions

As a result of the scandal, all other CT appearances in Great Britain were placed under censorship and the group soon split into the Throbbing Gristle, which already consisted of the four basic members, and other, mostly music-oriented individual projects. Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P-Orridge went on tour overseas shortly after the prostitution campaign. However, they decided not to appear in Canada because they had not received an entry permit at the instigation of the British ministries. The USA, on the other hand, granted entry without any problems and so Fanni Tutti and P-Orridge performed five performances under the title Cease to Exist in November 1976 . The title was taken from a song by Charles Manson that appeared as Never Learn Not to Love on the B-side of the Beach Boys single Bluebirds over the Mountain in 1968 . In order to imply a thematic connection, the performances were numbered: Nos. 1-3 found in Chicago , No. 4 in Los Angeles and No. 5 in Santa Monica .

Cease to Exist was about love, death and submission and showed, performed by Fanni Tutti and P-Orridge in radical extreme formances, relentless sadomasochistic practices of such borderline value that most of the viewers at the latest by the fourth performance of Cease to Exist No.4 in Los Angeles left the venue; The two naked protagonists used hypodermic needles, broken glass and razor blades to inflict bleeding injuries on their extremities and genitals while they masturbated, ejaculated or vomited on the spreading pool of blood. Eventually, Cosey and Genesis had sex in this mixture of body secretions. The undisguised portrayal of pleasure and pain in Cease to Exist No.4 surpassed all previous CT campaigns and made clear the radicalization of art by breaking taboos in public.

The conclusion was the comparatively harmless fifth performance, Cease to Exist No. 5 in Santa Monica, in which the props from the previous performances were gathered in a ceremonial act and the project was "adopted" with a kiss from the two actors.

The last COUM individual action, carried out by Genesis P-Orridge, took place in May 1978 under the title Scenes of Victory at the University of Antwerp . P-Orridge got serious blood poisoning during this performance.

aftermath

Many CT members, such as Monte Cazazza, also belonged to the Mail Art at the same time or as a result and mostly moved on the border of illegality ; so there are numerous prison stays in Cazazza's vita, while Genesis P-Orridge was later sued for obscene Mail Art postcards and other offensive acts in connection with his activities with Throbbing Gristle and later also Psychic TV .

The ICA appearance of COUM Transmissions was documented in 2002 in the compilation 24 Hours of Throbbing Gristle as a CD box set.

literature

  • Simon Ford: Wreckers of Civilization. Black Dog Publishing Company, London 2001, ISBN 1-901033-60-0

Notes, references and sources

  1. ^ E. Phin: The History of Coum Transmissions (1). Archived from the original on October 12, 2006 ; Retrieved September 25, 2009 .
  2. ↑ a b c Genesis P-Orridge - COUM Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle Era Actions (as of March 22, 2008)
  3. ↑ 10 Martello Street E8 in the London borough of Hackney is still home to numerous rental studios.
  4. ^ E. Phin: The History of Coum Transmissions (5). Archived from the original on August 24, 2007 ; Retrieved September 25, 2009 .
  5. ^ E. Phin: The History of Coum Transmissions (6). Archived from the original on October 12, 2006 ; Retrieved September 25, 2009 .
  6. ↑ a b Birgit Richard: The Industrial Culture Scene. Retrieved March 20, 2008 .
  7. ^ Prostitution. Coum Transmissions At The ICA Arts Center… Retrieved March 20, 2008 .

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