Art Sex Music

by Cosey Fanni Tutti

  Context is everything, no more so than with the selection of the five-frame Knave magazine work I showed, ‘And I Should Be Blue’. It comprised the whole magazine, which included my action of a set of lesbian photographs of me and another girl, naked and painting each other red and blue, with the caption, ‘When they’re finished their colourful claspings, our two artistes will still be left with the problem of the wall. If they’re smart, they’ll leave it as it stands, and try and palm it off on the Tate for vast sums of money.’ Priceless – in a manner of speaking. How wonderfully serendipitous that the sex action was now hanging in the Tate as part of a show on ‘art as business’. But I was (and still am) open to further exploring and extending the interesting contexts which the magazine actions continue to present me with. The inclusion of the Knave magazine work in ‘Pop Life’ provided such an opportunity. I received an invitation, instigated by Skot, to do the artist ‘guest lecture’ for the next (‘Sex and Art’) issue of the Los Angeles art magazine Artillery. I wrote an accompanying text for the Knave images that were published – extracting centrefold sex-magazine images and transposing them as the centrefold of an art magazine.

  7

  21 February 2010

  This year seemed to have a weird stop start feel to it with projects hovering around then falling away. Now focusing in is possible as confirmed exhibitions and events move ever closer. My recent lectures and in conversations have been so enjoyable and thought-provoking – new ideas placed to one side while I pay full attention to present works. Those restless undercurrents of creativity are bringing a fantastic feeling of expectation and excitement.

  The jerky start to 2010 was mainly due to the future of TG. After the USA tour all seemed well for a while, then an increasingly acerbic tone appeared in Gen’s emails to us about Paul’s role as TG manager, basically saying he didn’t want Paul involved any more, suggesting his own manager take over TG managerial duties.

  Gen sent a long email, which prompted an equally long reply from Sleazy directly addressing Gen’s conflicting personas and attitudes towards us, that his emails showed a lack of concentration on TG matters, a tone of mistrust, paranoia and bitterness towards us. The regrouping was teetering on the edge but Sleazy wanted to continue for a while longer, like me and Chris – we’d moved on from TG of old and were excited about Gristleism and a whole load of other gadgets we’d been working on that could bring new TG works in their wake: ‘a new thrust’, as Sleazy put it. Paul was more than a manager to TG: he added ideas into the mix, sought out suitable shows. He’d worked hard with us on ‘A=P=P=A=R=I=T=I=O=N’ (exceeding Gen’s own input), so for Gen to conspire to sack him was crazy talk.

  Things settled down – then Paul was forwarded a newsletter Gen had sent out (but not to any of us), announcing that Gen was ‘retiring from touring in any and all bands including TG to concentrate on art, writing and music’. Not surprisingly, people assumed TG had ended again – even we felt the need to contact Gen, thinking he’d left, particularly as we were all working on options for TG shows and new material.

  5 March 2010

  We’ve been feeling really good lately – mood has changed here at the School House. From wallowing and drifting to sharp focus and many ideas. I think it was the final ‘no live TG this year’ that closed one door and opened the flood gates. There’s nothing worse than wanting to do something but having a ‘maybe’ hanging over you.

  Paul’s many efforts to secure TG shows had faltered for one reason or another. It wasn’t easy to coordinate four very active people’s schedules. I’d been busy with more public speaking on art and music, doing a lecture at UCA Farnham, a filmed interview for a new online series, Sound & Vision, for the Tate’s website, a talk and Q&A for the Red Bull Music Academy in London, and me and Chris were part of a panel discussion for ‘Parallel Voices’ at the Siobhan Davies Studios, curated by Carsten Nicolai, that had us plus Carsten and Blixa (from Neubauten) speaking about our experiences in music and exchanging fun anecdotes and serious opinions on each other’s histories.

  After our talk, Carsten and Blixa played a short set which included some recordings of our voices from the conversation we’d just done – and Blixa doing his ‘voice of The Mummy’ scream, sending glass-shattering frequencies bouncing off the walls and making people recoil – except the ninety-year-old lady sat in the front row, who was partially deaf and loved it.

  The whole day had been enlightening, not only for having the pleasure of meeting Sue (Siobhan) and hearing Blixa’s scream, but also because of the afternoon interview between me, Carsten and Sue. We all analysed why we did what we did, how we did it and our feelings about the process, performance and reception of our work. It was deeply personal at times and revealing for us all. Sue was one of the few people I’ve felt immediate affinity with, an incredible talent and spirit.

  30 March 2010

  It’s taken me 2 days to come down from the euphoria of ‘Cosey Complex’. Well that and sleeping after the intense day of events then Cosey Club evening that went into the wee hours of Sunday. I do feel so privileged that so many creatively gifted and wonderful people took part in ‘Cosey Complex’. The day’s events were outstanding for so many reasons, not least for the opportunity to hear and see such diverse inspired and inspiring works in an atmosphere free of pretension and loaded with the spirit of generosity.

  ‘Cosey Complex’ was a special one-day event at the ICA, conceived by the writer Maria Fusco, who at the time was director of art writing at Goldsmiths, London. The event had been in the planning for nigh on a year. I’d first met Maria in 2007, when she interviewed me for the first Happy Hypocrite journal. The theme of that issue, and the starting point for our talk, was ‘Linguistic Hardcore’.

  We discussed my name, ‘Cosey’, how I got it, and what it meant to me. Maria pointed out that ‘Cosey’ seemed to have a life separate from me. She was right. To me, ‘Cosey’ had become a concept that represented what I was as well as what I did – it was more than just a name. I suppose that might have had some subconscious influence on our changing from Chris & Cosey to Carter Tutti beyond the more simple reason we’d given.

  Getting together with Maria and having such an unbelievably open and energised conversation planted a seed that grew slowly into what became one of the best concepts for an event in both my ‘name’ and the innovative repurposing of it. Maria approached the ICA – it being synonymous with my name from the ‘Prostitution’ scandal and as such a prime example of how ‘Cosey’ had become something ‘other’ than just being my name. The ICA commissioned the event and Maria worked with the curator, Richard Birkett. After many exchanges and meetings, Maria selected fourteen participants, some invited and some from open submission, all to create works by responding to ‘Cosey’ as methodology – or, as Maria so beautifully and succinctly put it, ‘By shifting Cosey from noun to verb’.

  ‘Cosey Complex’ wasn’t about me or my work. That was a tough concept to get your head around. I adopted a hands-off approach so that ‘Cosey Complex’ could remain true to Cosey as methodology and unfold without any intervention by me (Cosey as noun). I thought long and hard about whether to participate myself but came to the conclusion that I already was, by virtue of my role in the event as verb, as a concept for others to explore as methodology: ‘to further interrogate the implications of Cosey’s work, without direct reference to the work itself … to put research directly into practice’, as Maria described it. I felt that any presentation by me could complicate things, go against the whole notion of ‘Cosey Complex’, and simply wasn’t necessary. Instead I wrote a short introduction to open the event, particularly highlighting the fact that the concept was challenging for me because I didn’t subscribe to methodology (how it’s usually defined), it being anathema to my improvisational working practice – my work being myself and therefore inseparable. Where would I locate a methodology in my own work? Maria’s idea had provoked many questions about whether I actually did have my own method
ology. I decided my creative freedom overrode any subconscious methodology that could be hidden deep within my approach, that ultimately ‘I just am and my work is – Cosey’.

  Me and Chris arrived in London the day before ‘Cosey Complex’ to have a meal with Maria, Richard and many of the artists, including Chris Kraus and John Duncan. If anyone got me and what I did as Cosey, it was John. Everyone was so friendly and relaxed and very much looking forward to the next day. I had no idea what to expect from everyone and was so overwhelmed at them being there to present new works. As well as the live presentations, ‘Cosey Complex’ had a publication, The Reader, designed by Zak Kyes, which would be available on the day. The week leading up to the event, the ICA’s Reading Room was converted into a design and print studio, open to the public so that they could see The Reader being brought together. The publication included an introduction by Maria and her original interview with me, an overview by Zak, ‘Notes’ by Clunie Reid, and I’d contributed a sequence of images spanning my various works, from the magazine actions, old and new press cuttings, model cards and ‘Self lessness’, which were placed as ‘citings’ throughout the book. But what formed the core of The Reader were transcriptions of fascinating and diverse discussions on issues around methodology that had taken place between different research groups at the beginning of May. The whole project was so powerful in its completeness. Maria had produced an incredible work in ‘Cosey Complex’.

  The daytime programme ran from 1 p.m. through to 6 p.m., with readings, slide shows, a play and video works by writers, artists and theorists – Maria, Richard, Martin Bax, Clunie Reid, Anthony Elms, Daniela Cascella, Chris Kraus, Corin Sworn, Diedrich Diederichsen, Gerard Byrne and Rob Stone. The writer, actor and producer Graham Duff wrote and read out a satirical and hilarious fictional piece about him interviewing me for an art and culture magazine, analysing my work and ending in my producing a new work, ‘Restraining Order’ (against Graham), that had run into its third year. His consummate delivery of his piece had some people belly-laughing all the way through – although some of the more academically inclined didn’t much like the piss being taken out of the art world. It was refreshingly enjoyable and what I would have expected as he’s a genius when it comes to strange scenarios that go off at oblique and most bizarre tangents, like his amazing TV series, Ideal, and his work with Steve Coogan and Mark Gatiss.

  It didn’t seem like the day could get any better but the evening took celebration and joy up quite a few more notches with Richard’s Cosey Club, which, to all intents and purposes, had already taken up Cosey as methodology. Cosey Club ran from 9 p.m. until 3 a.m., with Andrew Weatherall, Fixmer/McCarthy, a great duo called Eve Black/Eve White and a new band (to me), Factory Floor. Paul was their manager at the time so we’d heard good things about them, Chris had done a remix for them and we were both keen to hear what they sounded like live. Nik Void, Gabe Gurnsey and Dominic Butler played a stomping set that had me dancing by the mixing desk and took me back to the early days when there was a more raw, free approach to music. That introduction marked the start of future collaborations. I was blown away by it all. The day and evening were truly ‘Cosey as methodology’ in action.

  28 April 2010

  We are now back in the studio recording for an audiovisual presentation in Italy at the end of May. I’m playing at Tate Modern’s 10th anniversary weekend. So I have lots of work to do in the coming weeks.

  On the tenth anniversary of the Tate Modern, I performed in the Turbine Hall along with Thurston Moore, DJ Spooky and others. Knowing what that chasm of a space was like for sound, I kept things ambient and played a live solo soundtrack to the projected collage of video and still images from my various art actions. Chris oversaw the front-of-house sound for me – I trusted his technical skills more than anyone else’s.

  Szabo was in my life again. After his funeral in 1982, the mourners had gone back to his wife Tris’s flat for the usual tea and sandwiches. Tris played Szabo’s favourite jazz records – to hell with whether they were to anyone else’s taste, they were a part of Szabo and made her and me smile. She came over to sit and talk with me. I could be wrong but I got the sense that only we two knew and understood Szabo and the very full life he’d led. She leaned over and picked something up. ‘I want you to have these,’ she said. ‘Szabo wanted you to have them.’

  She handed me a stack of over three hundred and fifty transparencies that he’d taken of me, all from the collaboration projects we’d worked on together – except those he’d sold to magazines. I was so touched by her kindness. When I got home and looked through them all I started thinking about my time in Szabo’s living-room studio, recalling our last sessions together when he’d commented on my body having changed since I’d started dancing. It wasn’t something I’d even thought about but he had a discerning eye when it came to the female form, and mine had apparently become firmer and more muscular. As soon as I saw the slides, mainly in red, black and white, all laid out in sequence, I knew it was a work just waiting to be realised. It took a long time to formulate.

  Over the following years, I visited and revisited the images before I arrived at the final form the work would take. I called it ‘Szabo Sessions Volumes 1–4’. Each volume consisted of selected frame-by-frame sequences of different poses, showing the slight adjustments to angles of my body, hand positions and facial expressions, and revealing the process of our co-creating the exacting aesthetic needed to meet market demand. I’d spent months scanning all the slides, doing endless test prints until I got the colour balance that matched the depth and richness of the slides, and then printed them myself on to A3 supergloss archival photographic paper. They looked beautiful, a lasting testament to Szabo’s exceptional talent and our brief but wonderful and creative friendship. ‘Szabo Sessions’ was exhibited for the first time at the A Palazzo Gallery in Brescia, Italy, as part of the exhibition ‘120 Day Volume’ curated by Cabinet Gallery.

  Carter Tutti were also part of the group show in Brescia. We’d been wanting to do something different in a live situation. The invitation to Brescia initiated a new way of working with sound. We prepared an audiovisual piece called ‘Harmonic Coaction’, the first in an ongoing series of live audiovisual performances that represented the assimilation of person, place and time, created live in situ using field recordings and visuals from and inspired by the site itself. In the case of Brescia, we used the exhibition and gallery space as source material. The exhibition-associated images we’d put together were projected on a huge scale from four corners of the room, intersecting with one another, the walls, ceiling, floor, exhibits and audience, integrating all within the space as we manipulated the many recorded sounds. The performance was recorded and immediately installed as a work – a soundtrack of the exhibition contained in a tall, black, monolithic speaker column.

  16 October 2010

  I’m in the grip of preparations for upcoming TG shows right now with most exhilarating moments in the studio trying out new sounds AND Chris just finished making a new sound box for me.

  For over six months our time and attention were taken up with all things Carter Tutti and our solo projects. ‘Harmonic Coaction’ had resurfaced in Ancona, Italy, and we’d mastered the early Chris & Cosey albums ready to release on vinyl through our trusted colleagues at Cargo. Chris had gone to the STEIM centre for electronic music in Amsterdam, to do a ‘Dirty Electronics’ experimental electronic music workshop and performance with John Richards. He’d already done one at De Montfort University, Leicester, and had designed his own touch-sensitive random sound instrument called Dirty-Carter. It was this and all the other off-the-wall hand-built units and the Gristleism that had launched me, Chris and Sleazy into that ‘new-thrust’ zone for both our individual music work and for TG – which had sprung back on to our schedule for some more live shows.

  Sleazy had commissioned a number of strange noise-making objects to be built for him, consulting with Chris on the practical possibilities over a
nd above his fantastical ideas. Sleazy brought them over to use for the TG shows – and Chris rebuilt them so they actually worked, resoldering joints and reconfiguring where necessary. He also built me a Tutti Box, an awesome noise-generator made from spare electronic parts built into a retro wooden radio, battery-powered with a flashing plasma display triggered by the audio signals. It was outlandishly grungy and very noisy. I couldn’t have asked for more.

  It came with a cost attached, though. When Chris was drilling the case he drilled through his fingernail. He almost passed out. I got him straight into the car, where he did pass out, waking up as we arrived at A&E. It was excruciatingly painful. But he isn’t one to do things by halves – a few days later he broke a finger on the other hand when he trapped it in a folding table. He was splinted on both hands but ready for the TG gigs.

  Despite the drilled and broken fingers, we couldn’t wait to get out there and blast our new instruments through a big PA. The problem we had was: what would Gen do? We wanted to include him. Specifically with that in mind, we’d worked with an inventive but secretive electronics guy (who had previously built Chris some small handheld synth boxes) on developing a simple, interactive, long ‘ribbon strip’ instrument (similar to a theremin), which would provide Gen with the means to join in with us and our new TG-type material. Alas the ribbon project didn’t quite work out, so at the last minute TG hastily bought Gen a handheld Korg Monotron to use and put through his effects pedals. Anything a bit different and ‘outside the box’ was better than nothing, and we hoped he’d embrace our enthusiasm for the new, more experimental TG live experience.