Art Sex Music

by Cosey Fanni Tutti

  26 April 1975

  Gen had a freak out early tonight and pushed me into the water heater. I hurt my knee and he tried to kick the telly in … I have a couple of big bruises … but what worries me more is that my arm really hurts bad.

  Working at St James Press was continuing to stress Gen out and I found myself on the receiving end of one of his violent outbursts. Bruises weren’t a good thing, full stop, but any mark on me also meant I couldn’t model. There was no Photoshop then and only the high-end magazines like Playboy used airbrushing.

  I put off any job offers and prioritised COUM, spending hours in the library researching towns for the ‘Tree of Life’ tour (which never happened), working out ideas and making the main prop for the AMP action, a long, ritualistic-looking, five-foot-long wooden pole studded with five-inch sharp nails, feathers and with a black dildo at each end. The action took place with me naked but for a leather studded G-string I’d made and a black strap-on dildo, and Gen in black trousers and a black eyepatch. As the action came to an end, we picked up one end of the stick each and inserted the dildos – me into my vagina and Gen into his anus. The room was very quiet. No one seemed to want to comment, and Tom, who was supposed to document it, didn’t take a single photograph. Not sure if he was put off by the mechanics of having to zoom in to focus on our intimate penetrations. Still, our friends Collette and Alan Fisher enjoyed it and someone else took some photos.

  We didn’t take any chances at missing out on better documenting our next action, ‘Studio of Lust’, at Nuffield Gallery in Southampton. We had Sleazy put his camera on a tripod and set it to automatically take photos every two minutes throughout our one-hour piece. Just me, Gen and Sleazy in separate corners of the room, each working with our objects and bodies. There was blood, cutting, urination, masturbation and oral sex as we slowly joined one another to interact in creating various forms from our entangled naked bodies. It was a challenge for Sleazy, having not been with a naked woman before, and I positioned myself carefully when I sensed his hesitation as he came to lie beside me.

  Me and Sleazy would meet up quite often when Gen was at work, sorting out photos and talking through ideas together, including the COUM invitation to participate in the prestigious 9th Paris Biennale. Its own stance on championing non-standard practices in art fitted us well and we were chosen to represent Britain with the support of the British Council. We were going up in the art world and in good company with Bill Viola, Marina Abramović, Urs Lüthi, Gina Pane, Lynda Benglis, John Stezaker, Orlan, and more.

  Preparations for the Biennale had been ongoing, with my making numerous trips to the British Council offices to sort out travel and other official paperwork, organising the construction of objects and arranging their shipment. Sleazy had some great contacts through Hipgnosis and put me in touch with Design Animation, who were able to make a Perspex box for our Paris action. I got the box done to spec for just £35 and had that and the other objects crated and collected for shipping.

  The box worked well and stood to one side in the space we’d been given for our action. The idea was to have a large, clear Perspex cube with air holes in the top and a large closable tube on one side as an access point. Within the box would be my soiled tampons, pieces of red meat and maggots. My tampons were in varying shades of red, from heavily to hardly soiled – the bloody menstrual cycle made visible – life’s blood, my period pain, my fertility, my tampons. The live maggots would feed off the meat and hatch into flies, audibly buzzing with life and flying around in the confines of the box. A living sculpture. The work, ‘Jusqu’à la Balle Crystal’, was as much about the cycle of life as the aesthetic, and I’d had to collect my used, bloodied tampons for a while. Tremble took to eating them if she got the chance, so I had to store them out of her reach to save her from damaging herself – and me from having to pull the string to extract them when they came out the other end. That had proved embarrassing a few times when she did her toilet in the park.

  On the walls of the space we’d been allocated were small glass-fronted mouse cages containing Sleazy’s black-and-white casualty photos of young men. These were slowly eaten away as the mice used them as nesting material. We fed and watered the mice each day but when we arrived the morning of our final action they’d gone, escaped – or been released into the museum somewhere. The Perspex box and the remnants from our actions stayed as an exhibit, as documentation of our live actions.

  My trip to Paris coincided with a new passport in the name of ‘Cosey P-Orridge’. I’d changed my name by deed poll. Still single – Gen, if asked, would refer to me as his sister.

  I’d crocheted Gen a multicoloured suit for him to wear in Paris. I wore a silver lurex Mary Quant top and matching tights and a satin miniskirt. We were wined and dined at the British Council and cocktail parties, and approached by various magazines, including Time Life, who came to photograph our second action. We had our own photographer, Barbara Reise, who with her friend Alan Harrison documented everything for us.

  All that was pushed to one side when we met up with our artist friend Gary Glaser, who we’d met in Kiel. He lived in Paris and wanted to show us around. Gary took us to a small theatre called Raymond Duncan’s Academy. Raymond had been Isadora Duncan’s brother and their mutual advocacy of spirit of freedom of expression in all the arts was still very much present in the theatre and in the Greek-influenced decor. Each Saturday between 7 and 8.30 p.m. it was open house for people to take the stage and do what they wanted. The atmosphere was incredible, the smell unique; it was timeless.

  On our return from Paris, David Mayor invited us for a weekend stay at his stepmother’s farmhouse, which stood in so many acres of land we walked for hours. I made the most of the unusual setting and did some semi-nude photos for my first model ‘Z card’. Sleazy developed and did prints for me and I took them to Walker Prints, the go-to printer for model cards. I now had a model card and a classy-looking portfolio case. I just needed to fill it. I’d been collecting some prints as I’d been going along from the more generous photographers I worked with. My ideas for the card were a little too focused on art, not enough on the glamour market. I credited the photos to COUM Transmissions. I was a bit naive to even think of using a known photographer’s name to garner interest. No one knew who COUM were – not that it mattered. It was an art project, after all, and COUM Transmissions acted as ‘sign’.

  13 November 1975

  Mary’s given me her boyfriend’s telephone number as he runs ‘Whitehouse’ and ‘Park Lane’.

  An obstacle me and other models had to navigate was the ‘casting couch’, which was very much in practice for securing some modelling and film work. I went to most auditions assuming I’d have to carefully negotiate NOT having sex to get the job – any I did have off camera with photographers was my choice.

  I’d worked a lot for Michel, who was with Tabor Publications, a small but prolific mid-market sex-magazine publisher, and we built up a good friendship. He had a different vibe from the other photographers. He was French, about forty, on his third marriage and had led an interesting life as a mercenary before doing photography. Michel and I became lovers – something Gen had encouraged (much to my pleasure, not that Gen knew).

  I’d meet Michel outside Notting Hill Gate Tube station, where he’d pick me up either on his Harley-Davidson motorbike or in his bright-orange, two-seater, three-wheel Reliant Bond Bug car. It roared like an aircraft. I was shit-scared it was going to take off if the wind got under it. We’d go to his flat for afternoon nooky and just to be together and talk about the deeper things in life. He’d studied magic for over twenty-two years and had an enviable collection of books on the subject and other philosophical works, and the walls of his flat were covered in his drawings and paintings. I liked him – he made me feel safe and taught me so much about sex, not least his focusing on my pleasure, placing it before his own, taking his time and giving me my first unassisted orgasm.

  He gave me copies of the Tabor m
agazines I’d been in and some prints of my favourite shots. I did a job for him with Mary Millington, who he’d used numerous times, and she put me in contact with her boyfriend, David Sullivan, to get more work. Mary was featured throughout David’s magazines and had a large following of admirers. She was a pretty blonde, perfectly formed and petite, and always happy. Michel wasn’t pleased to hear our conversation as Sullivan was a competitor who ended up taking a large chunk of the market.

  But I took up Mary’s offer and rang David, who called back about my audition and arranged for a taxi to take me to and from his place. We got on well and talked for hours. I passed the audition and was photographed in a blonde wig two days later for Park Lane. David also published the soft-pornography magazines Playbirds and Whitehouse. I always thought of the latter title as a direct and ironic reference to Mary Whitehouse, the zealous anti-obscenity and anti-pornography campaigner. I admired David’s spirit and ambition and I respected his honest approach to the business he was in. It was a rare thing in the sex industry at that time. More than that, he was an anti-censorship and a sexual-freedom campaigner, and as such an adversary of Mary Whitehouse. He was shrewd in using his magazines to further his campaign, placing straplines like ‘Genuine Pornography’ and ‘Fully Uncensored Pictures’, which helped boost sales. He wasn’t afraid of sticking his neck out, and in one of his Whitehouse magazines (in which I appeared as ‘Susie’), instead of the usual open-crotch centre spread he published a text on his opposition to the censorship of pornography, posing the question ‘Which is the real pornography? THIS? or THIS?’ – violent atrocities shown on TV to all ages or sexual images for adults. It was illustrated by a sex photo on one page and a bloody Cambodian war casualty on the other.

  17 January 1976

  Awakened by a sergeant wanting to deliver a summons to Gen. He managed it and I photographed it and then he fucking took it away again! The court appearance is for February 23rd. We are contesting it.

  Mail art had started as an exciting exchange of personal gifts of art and defiance against the preciousness of art, but as it grew that original spirit got lost. Theme-based mail art exhibitions started springing up, specifically to be shown in galleries. Mail art was a victim of its own success. The art world wanted it – it had become precious. With that shift in motivation came a decline in quality. I started getting more and more instant-printed impersonal dross in reply to my handmade collages and objects, and I eventually bowed out of the mail art scene except for a few special people. What also contributed to my parting company was Gen being prosecuted and found guilty of disseminating pornographic material through the mail, relating in part to his postcards depicting the Queen collaged with cut-ups from porn magazines. They weren’t new – I’d done one in my diary back in 1973. Difference being, Gen posted his. The trial had turned into another work, ‘G.P.O. v G.P-O’, which was carefully documented throughout.

  When the trial finally took place on 4 April there was huge support, not least from William Burroughs, Bridget Riley, mail artists, the British Council and the Arts Council – to no avail. The seriousness of the situation was driven home when Gen was told he might get a jail sentence or a large fine. He got very scared and we sought proper legal representation. How odd that my pornographic activities were taking place simultaneously to him being prosecuted for one of the main reasons I’d begun my modelling project – collaging (my own) nude images from sex magazines on to postcards – and that my fees for modelling would help towards some of the costs involved in the trial.

  Ted Little, the then Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), offered us two shows, one on mail art and one on COUM. I’d spent three days printing photos of our actions so he could see what was available for exhibiting. They would meet costs within reason and pay a fee of £150–200 for the performance/exhibition – which evolved into ‘Prostitution’. That same week we attended a British Council meeting to be told that, on the strength of the work in Paris, COUM had been selected to represent Britain in ‘Arte Inglese Oggi 1960–76’ in Milan. The exhibition was a mix of established and up-and-coming British artists, including Jeff Nuttall, Bridget Riley, Allen Jones, David Hockney, Peter Blake, Gilbert & George, and Mark Boyle. As many artists as possible were assembled in Trafalgar Square for a group photo for the catalogue, for which me and Sleazy also printed up the COUM photographs and me and Gen each wrote statements and a description of the work ‘Towards the Crystal Bowl’.

  The action took place over two days in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II arcade, where we had a square structure built in the form of a very large maze of scaffolding above a vast square vat surrounded by a ring of polystyrene granules. The vat was originally meant to be filled with milk for me to swim in, but there was a milk shortage and an alternative was sought – the trusty old polystyrene granules. It was a good choice as it kept me warm once submerged but it also shot up my nose if I wasn’t careful when holding my breath. It was a silent balletic piece, me in matching silver lurex top and tights, and silver ballet shoes, slowly climbing down from the top of the scaffolding and striking elegant poses before descending into the bowl of granules to use its vast whiteness as a canvas on which to create abstract forms by exposing parts of my body, while Gen photographed them from the scaffolding above. Dressed all in black, he had emerged from a shower of chains at the side of the structure to climb to the top, sometimes suspending himself by chains attached to the frame. It was a huge success: the people loved it and watched in quiet fascination, someone shouting ‘Bravo!’ at the end.

  The next day there was a crowd waiting for us. After the official exhibition opening, various meals with the British contingent and gallery people, and another action I performed at the Galleria Borgogna, we flew back to London to a warm welcome from Sleazy, who was super-excited about just being made a partner in Hipgnosis.

  *

  I’d been going to Hipgnosis when Sleazy had free time and he’d shown me the basics of the developing and printing process in their darkroom – just a small sectioned-off area in the corner of their office with a blackout curtain and heavy with the smells of developer and fixer. He’d helped me set up my own darkroom at Beck Road in what was a small downstairs kitchen at the back of the house. It had the requisite water supply and sink – it was just right. He helped me get all the necessary equipment as and when I could afford it and I painted the room, made blackout curtains and sorted out wood to use as a workbench.

  Having the darkroom had brought Chris (Carter) directly into my life. I’d taken photos for the multimedia Vacuum show that he and John had worked on together. John and Chris needed prints doing and came to use my new darkroom. Chris had been working at a photographic studio in Soho, so he knew the ropes already. I remember the day clearly. I was sat on the sofa in the upstairs living room close to the kitchen doorway. John and Chris walked through to the kitchen to talk to Gen about showing them the darkroom. Chris stopped short outside the doorway and right in front of me, just a foot away from my face. My eyes were on a level with his slim hips, clad in very tight denim jeans that enhanced every contour of his crotch and firm, pert buttocks. As my eyes moved up from his narrow twenty-six-inch waist to his broad shoulders, he turned to go downstairs to the darkroom. ‘I’ll show you,’ I said, taking the chance to be in such a confined space with him.

  It was the first time he’d been to Beck Road. We sat and chatted and he asked to hear our music, then invited us to his flat in Crouch End, where he lived with his (now) wife, Simone. We made frequent visits to each other’s places and much talk of collaborating musically eventually turned into reality, with Chris bringing his synthesiser and other equipment to Martello Street to jam together and experiment.

  *

  Throbbing Gristle took some years to finally arrive, and in a workable format. The line-up and sound had gone through many guises, including, as John remembers, Gen’s proposal that John’s group Vacuum become ‘VaCOUM’ – a would-be Throbbing Gristle. As Vacuum
involved Chris and he’d become an increasing part of our lives, the music was getting closer to what TG became known for. All the jam sessions and recordings we did were experiments to find something that clicked with us all. Nothing had worked before Chris arrived. Les had decided to stay in Hull, and John left with much regret. He knew, like the rest of us, how difficult it was to find like-minded people to work with, but, as he told me, ‘I got out before Gen did another purge – either on me, or witness it on anyone else. I wasn’t going to be bullied out by being made to cry inside.’ Gen steered the COUM ship and anyone unwilling to fall in line was ‘encouraged’ to leave by his insidious tactics that undermined their self-esteem, making it unbearable for them to stay. As well as the music and art, John and I had enjoyed meaningful times on our own together; he’d sit with me while I wrote and drew in my diaries or talk with me in my workroom. He came around less and less, and I missed him as a collaborator and friend.

  COUM continued for a while but had shifted in intent and personnel, eventually reduced to just me, Gen and sometimes Sleazy. It was no longer about fantasy costumes and frivolity, instead relating to the self and reality, with the actions getting more extreme. As far as the music was concerned, there was me, Chris, Sleazy and Gen, and we all lived in London, which made availability easier than it had been with COUM. Chris wanted nothing to do with COUM and saw TG as an entity in itself, a collective – although he hated the name Throbbing Gristle and would only call it TG or Gristle. TG was four equals, each bringing their unique life experiences, talents and abilities to the melting pot. And we were strong individuals who, once united, formed a solid and unshakeable whole – which had its setbacks.

  Chris was staunchly resistant to Gen assuming the position of any kind of leader of TG. He saw TG as being the four of us in mutual collaboration, with decisions made based on a majority vote, not on the appeasement of any one individual. Because Chris was quiet and reserved, Gen made the mistake of assuming he could be easily manipulated. He misread Chris completely. Chris wasn’t green, but he also wasn’t the type to push himself forward or shout from the rooftops when he did anything of note. Underneath that kind, reserved exterior he was strong-minded, ingenious, very well read, familiar with Ballard, Crowley, Burroughs, Huxley, Manson, etc., and was au fait with magick and many of the references and interests that me, Gen and Sleazy shared. The difference between him, Gen and Sleazy was that (like me) he didn’t subscribe to a movement or cult. He was his own person.