Art in the right place: Cosey Fanni Tutti’s ‘Art Sex Music’

Five years ago I wrote a blog about one of my favourite bands, Throbbing Gristle (TG; Yorkshire slang for a penile erection). In that article, I noted that TG were arguably one of “the most extreme bands of all time” and “highly confrontational”. They were also the pioneers of ‘industrial music’ and in terms of their ‘songs’, no topic was seen as taboo or off-limits. In short, they explored the dark and obsessive side of the human condition. Their ‘music’ featured highly provocative and disturbing imagery including hard-core pornography, sexual manipulation, school bullying, ultra-violence, sado-masochism, masturbation, ejaculation, castration, cannibalism, Nazism, burns victims, suicide, and serial killers (Myra Hindley and Ian Brady).

I mention all this because I have just spent the last few days reading the autobiography (‘Art Sex Music‘) of Cosey Fanni Tutti (born Christine Newbie), one of the four founding members of TG. It was a fascinating (and in places a harrowing) read. As someone who is a record-collecting completist and having amassed almost everything that TG ever recorded, I found Cosey’s book gripping and read the last 350 pages (out of 500) in a single eight-hour sitting into the small hours of Sunday morning earlier today.

TG grew out of the ‘performance art’ group COUM Transmissions in the mid-1970s comprising Genesis P-Orridge (‘Gen’, born Neil Megson in 1950) and Cosey. At the time, Cosey and Gen were a ‘couple’ (although after reading Cosey’s book, it was an unconventional relationship to say the least). TG officially formed in 1975 when Chris Carter (born 1953) and Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson (1955-2010). Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Fairburn famously called the group “wreckers of civilisation” (which eventually became the title of their 1999 biography by Simon Ford).

As I noted in my previous article, TG are – psychologically – one of the most interesting groups I have ever come across and Cosey’s book pulled no punches. To some extent, Cosey’s book attempted to put the record straight in response to Simon Ford’s book which was arguably a more Gen-oriented account of TG. Anyone reading Cosey’s book will know within a few pages who she sees as the villain of the TG story. Gen is portrayed as an egomaniacal tyrant who manipulated her. Furthermore, she was psychologically and physically abused by Gen throughout their long relationship in the 1970s. Thankfully, Cosey fell in love with fellow band member Chris Carter and he is still the “heartbeat” of the relationship and to who her book is dedicated.

Like many of my favourite groups (The Beatles, The Smiths, The Velvet Underground, Depeche Mode), TG were (in Gestaltian terms) more than the sum of their parts and all four members were critical in them becoming a cult phenomenon. The story of their break up in the early 1980s and their reformation years later had many parallels with that of the Velvet Underground’s split and reformation – particularly the similarities between Gen and Lou Reed who both believed they were leaders of “their” band and who both walked out during their second incarnations.

Cosey is clearly a woman of many talents and after reading her book I would describe her as an artist (and not just a ‘performance artist’), musician (or maybe ‘anti-musician in the Brian Eno sense of the word), writer, and lecturer, as well as former pornographic actress, model, and stripper. It is perhaps her vivid descriptions of her life in the porn industry and as a stripper that (in addition to her accounts of physical and psychological abuse by Gen) were the most difficult to read. For someone as intelligent as Cosey (after leaving school with few academic qualifications but eventually gaining a first-class degree via the Open University), I wasn’t overly convinced by her arguments that her time working in the porn industry both as a model and actress was little more than an art project that she engaged in on her own terms. But that was Cosey’s justification and I have no right to challenge her on it.

What I found even more interesting was how she little connection between her ‘pornographic’ acting and modelling work and her time as a stripper (the latter she did purely for money and to help make ends meet during the 1980s). Her work as a porn model and actress was covert, private, seemingly enjoyable, and done behind closed doors without knowing who the paying end-users were seeing her naked. Her work as a stripper was overt, public, not so enjoyable, and played out on stage directly in front of those paying to see her naked. Two very different types of work and two very different psychologies (at least in the way that Cosey described it).

Obviously both jobs involved getting naked but for Cosey, that appeared to be the only similarity. She never ever had sex for money with any of the clientele that paid to see her strip yet she willingly made money for sex within the porn industry. For Cosey, there was a moral sexual code that she worked within, and that sex as a stripper was a complete no-no. The relationship with Gen was (as I said above) ‘unconventional’ and Gen often urged her and wanted her to have sex with other men (and although she never mentioned it in her book, I could speculate that Gen had some kind of ‘cuckold fetish’ that I examined in a previous blog as well as some kind of voyeur). There were a number of times in the book when Cosey appeared to see herself as some kind of magnet for unwanted attention (particularly exhibitionists – so-called ‘flashers’ – who would non-consensually expose their genitalia in front of Cosey from a young age through to adulthood). Other parts of the book describe emotionally painful experiences (and not just those caused by Gen) including both her parents disowning her and a heartfelt account of a miscarriage (and the hospital that kept her foetus without her knowledge or consent). There are other sections in the book that some readers may find troubling including her menstruation art projects (something that I perhaps should have mentioned in my blog  on artists who use their bodily fluids for artistic purposes).

Cosey’s book is a real ‘warts and all’ account of her life including her many health problems, many of which surprisingly matched my own (arrhythmic heart condition, herniated spinal discs, repeated breaking of feet across the lifespan). Another unexpected connection was that her son with Chris Carter (Nick) studied (and almost died of peritonitis) as an undergraduate studying at art at Nottingham University or Nottingham Trent University. I say ‘or’ because at one stage in the book it says that Nick studied at Nottingham University and in another extract it says they were proud parents attending his final degree art show at Nottingham Trent University. I hope it was the latter.

Anyone reading the book would be interested in many of the psychological topics that make an appearance in the book including alcoholism, depression, claustrophobia, egomania, and suicide to name just a few. In previous blogs I’ve looked at whether celebrities are more prone to some psychological conditions including addictions and egomania and the book provides some interesting case study evidence. As a psychologist and a TG fan I loved reading the book.

 Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addictions, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Cooper, D. (2012). Sypha presents … Music from the Death Factory: A Throbbing Gristle primer. Located at: http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/sypha-presents-music-from-death-factory.html?zx=c19a3a826c3170a7

Fanni Tutti, C. (2017). Art Sex Music. Faber & Faber: London.

Ford, S. (1999). Wreckers of Civilization: The Story of Coum Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle. London: Black Dog Publishing.

Kirby, D. (2011). Transgressive representations: Satanic ritual abuse, Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, and First Transmission. Literature and Aesthetics, 21, 134-149.

Kromhout, M. (2007). ‘The Impossible Real Transpires’ – The Concept of Noise in the Twentieth Century: a Kittlerian Analysis. Located at: http://www.mellekromhout.nl/wp-content/uploads/The-Impossible-Real-Transpires.pdf

Reynolds, S. (2006). Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk, 1978–1984. New York: Penguin.

Sarig, R. (1998). The Secret History of Rock: The Most Influential Bands You’ve Never Heard Of. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications.

Walker, J.A. (2009). Cosey Fanni Tutti & Genesis P-Orridge in 1976: Media frenzy, Prostitution-style, Art Design Café, August 10. Located at: http://www.artdesigncafe.com/cosey-fanni-tutti-genesis-p-orridge-1-2009

Wells, S. (2007). A Throbbing Gristle primer. The Guardian, May 27. Located at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2007/may/29/athrobbinggristleprimer

Saying power: The greatest (and funniest) sex quotes of all time

For a number of years now, I have been collecting famous and not-so-famous quotes about various aspects of sexual behaviour. Some of these are funny, some satirical, some literary, some poignant, and some just make you think about sex in a slightly different way. Obviously I can’t take any credit for this collection apart from the way I have edited and categorized the quotes. I hope you find something here that tickles your fancy.

General quotes about sex

• “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power” (Oscar Wilde)
• “Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant” 
(George Burns)
• “Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it” (Richard Feynman)
• “There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL” (P.J. O’Rourke)
• “Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it” (Woody Allen)
• “An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex” (Aldous Huxley)
• “Sex is emotion in emotion” (Mae West)
• “Sex is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other” (Marquis de Sade)
• “Sex is the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble” (John Barrymore)
• “Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets” (Andy Warhol)
• “My brain: it’s my second favorite organ” (Woody Allen)
•  “Sex between a man and a woman can be absolutely wonderful – provided you get between the right man and the right woman” (Woody Allen)
•  “Is sex dirty? Only if it’s done right” (Woody Allen)
• “Sex on television can’t hurt you unless you fall off” (Anon)
• “Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. ‘Yes’ is the answer’” (Swami X)
• “It is not sex that gives the pleasure, but the lover” (Marge Piercy)
• “Sex:  the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable” (Lord Chesterfield)
• “The tragedy is when you’ve got sex in the head instead of down where it belongs” (D.H. Lawrence)
• “I’d like to meet the man who invented sex and see what he’s working on now” (Anon)
• “Sex is interesting, but it’s not totally important. I mean it’s not even as important (physically) as excretion.  A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement” (Charles Bukowski)
• “Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night’ (Rodney Dangerfield)
• “Sex appeal is 50% what you’ve got and 50% what people think you’ve got” (Sophia Loren)

Sex and reproduction

• “It is not economical to go to bed early to save the candles if the result is twins” (Chinese Proverb)
• “Familiarity breeds contempt – and children” (Mark Twain)
• “Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way around” (David Lodge)
• “The hypothalamus is one of the most important parts of the brain, involved in many kinds of motivation, among other functions.  The hypothalamus controls the ‘Four F’s’: fighting, fleeing, feeding, and mating” (Marvin Dunnette)
• “Kids in back seats cause accidents, accidents in back seats cause kids” (Anon)
• “The best contraceptive is a glass of cold water. Not before or after, but instead” (Anon)
• “My father told me all about the birds and the bees, the liar – I went steady with a woodpecker till I was twenty-one” (Bob Hope)

Sex and love

• “The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it” (Woody Allen)
• “Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go it’s one of the best” (Woody Allen)
• “Love is the answer, but while you’re waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions” (Woody Allen)
• “Love is a matter of chemistry, but sex is a matter of physics” (Anon)
• “Love ain’t nothing but sex misspelled” (Harlan Ellison)
• “Love is not the dying moan of a distant violin – it’s the triumphant twang of a bedspring” (S.J. Perelman)

Men on female sexuality

• “My girlfriend always laughs during sex, no matter what she’s reading” 
(Steve Jobs
• “You know that look that women get when they want to have sex? Me neither” (Steve Martin)
•  “My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch”
(Jack Nicholson)
• “Ah, yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet”
(Robin Williams)
• “Women need a reason to have sex Men just need a place”
(Billy Crystal)
• “When a man goes on a date, he wonders if he is going to get lucky. A woman already knows” (Frederike Ryder)
• “I think men talk to women so they can sleep with them and women sleep with men so they can talk to them” (Jay McInerney)
• “Desire is in men a hunger, in women only an appetite” (Mignon McLaughlin)
• “My wife is a sex object – every time I ask for sex, she objects” (Les Dawson)
• “Anybody who believes that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach flunked geography” (Robert Byrne)
• “Men get laid, but women get screwed” (Quentin Crisp)
• “Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man” (Mignon McLaughlin)

Women on male sexuality

• “I admit I have a tremendous sex drive. My boyfriend lives forty miles away” (Phyllis Diller)
• “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other” (Jane Austen)
• “Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships”
(Sharon Stone)
• “Among men, sex sometimes results in intimacy; among women, intimacy sometimes results in sex” (Barbara Cartland)
• “I know nothing about sex, because I was always married” (Zsa Zsa Gabor)
• “Men are those creatures with two legs and eight hands” (Jayne Mansfield)

Masturbation

• “Don’t knock masturbation – it’s sex with someone I love” 
Woody Allen
• “Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand” (Woody Allen)
• “I’m such a good lover because I practice a lot on my own” (Woody Allen)
• “Masturbation: The primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it’s a cure” (Thomas Szasz)
• “We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation” (Lily Tomlin)
• “The good thing about masturbation is that you don’t have to get dressed up for it” (Truman Capote)
• “A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation” (Karl Kraus)

Chastity, impotence, and medical problems

• “Lord, grant me chastity and continence…but not yet” (St. Augustine)
• “Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope” (George Burns)
• “There’s a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause severe swelling. So what’s the problem?” (Dustin Hoffman)
• “Chastity: The most unnatural of the sexual perversions” (Aldous Huxley)
• “To succeed with the opposite sex, tell her you’re impotent. She can’t wait to disprove it” (Cary Grant)
•  “Remember, if you smoke after sex you’re doing it too fast” (Woody Allen)
• “The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul” (William B. Yeats)
• “Nature abhors a virgin – a frozen asset” (Clare Boothe Luce)

Sexual perversion

• “The only unnatural sex act is that which you cannot perform” (Alfred Kinsey)
• “The only unnatural sexual behaviour is none at all” (Sigmund Freud)
• “There is nothing wrong with going to bed with someone of your own sex. People should be very free with sex, they should draw the line at goats” (Elton John
)
• “Don’t worry, it only seems kinky the first time” (Anon)
• “An erection is like the Theory of Relativity – the more you think about it, the harder it gets” (Anon)
• “I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults” (Gore Vidal)
• “Kinky is using a feather. Perverted is using the whole chicken” (Anon)
• “During sex I fantasize that I’m someone else” (Richard Lewis)
• “It doesn’t matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses” (Mrs. Patrick Campbell)

Pornography

• “Pornography is whatever gives the Judge an erection” (Anon)
• “Pornography: That which excites, whether from approval or disapproval” (Leonard Rossiter)
• “My reaction to porn films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first 20 minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live” (Erica Jong)
• “The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting” (Gloria Leonard)
• “What’s the difference between art and pornography? A government grant!” (Peter Griffin)
• “Pornography is literature designed to be read with one hand” (Angela Lambert)
• “Pornography is in the loin of the beholder” (Charles Rembar)
• “Pornography is supposed to arouse sexual desires. If pornography is a crime, when will they arrest makers of perfume?” (Richard Fleischer)
• “A dirty book is rarely dusty” (Anon)
• “A widespread taste for pornography means that nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction” (J.G. Ballard)
• “To know the difference between erotica and pornography you must first know the difference between naked and nude” (Bernard Poulin)
• “Playboy exploits sex the way Sports Illustrated exploits sports” (Hugh Hefner)
• “Pornography is the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it” (D.H. Lawrence)
• “Pornography tells lies about women. But pornography tells the truth about men” (John Stoltenberg)

Prostitution

• “I remember the first time I had sex – I kept the receipt” (Groucho Marx). 
• “When a guy goes to a prostitute, he’s not paying her for sex, he’s paying her to leave” (Anon)
• “When a man talks dirty to a woman, it’s sexual harassment.  When a woman talks dirty to a man, it’s $3.95 a minute” (Anon)
• “The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs less” (Brendan Francis Behan)
• “I once knew a woman who offered her honor. So I honored her offer
and all night long I was on her and off her” (Anon)
• “I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy” 
(Tom Clancy)

Sex, psychiatry, and surveys

• “With me, nothing goes right. My psychiatrist said my wife and I should have sex every night. We’ll never see each other!” (Rodney Dangerfield) 
  
• “A student undergoing a word-association test was asked why a snowstorm put him in mind of sex. He replied frankly:  ‘Because everything does’” (Honor Tracy)
• “I haven’t trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I’ve never met a women in my life who would give up lunch” (Erma Bombeck)
• “According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable undressing in front of men than they do undressing in front of other women. They say that women are too judgmental, where, of course, men are just grateful”
 (Robert De Niro)

Sex addiction

• “I’m a heroine addict. I need to have sex women who have saved someone’s life” (Mitch Hedberg)“
  
• “Sex.  In America an obsession.  In other parts of the world a fact” (Marlene Dietrich)

Sex, God and religion

• “I thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty” (John Waters)
• “Men reach their sexual peak at eighteen. Women reach theirs at thirty-five. Do you get the feeling that God is playing a practical joke?” (Rita Rudner)
• “The only thing wrong with being an atheist is that there’s nobody to talk to during an orgasm” (Anon)
• “When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities” (Matt Groening)
• “Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things:  One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in hell.  The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love” (Butch Hancock)
• “To hear many religious people talk, one would think God created the torso, head, legs and arms, but the devil slapped on the genitals” (Don Schrader)
• “Sex is God’s joke on human beings” (Bette Davis)
• “Why should we take advice on sex from the Pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t!” (George Bernard Shaw)
• “See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time” (Robin Williams)

Infidelity

• “What’s the three words you never want to hear while making love? ‘Honey, I’m home!'” (Ken Hammond)
• “You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct” (W. Somerset Maugham)
• “Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?” (Murray Banks)

Banned on the run: The extreme world of Throbbing Gristle

“I don’t think there’s any point in doing anything unless you push yourself. When in doubt – be extreme” (Genesis P-Orridge)

“[We] were interested in taboos. What the boundaries were, where sound became noise and where noise became music and where entertainment became pain, and where pain became entertainment. All the contradictions of culture” (Genesis P-Orridge)

Today’s blog is a little leftfield and as I write this, I’m not quite sure where it’s going to end up. Regular readers will know from some of my previous blogs that I am a bit of a music obsessive and that music is one of the most important things in my life. Given that one of the things I like to examine in my blog is extreme behaviour, I thought I would have a brief look at one of the most extreme bands of all time – Throbbing Gristle (TG) – who coincidentally happen to be one of my all-time favourite groups. (In fact, I have surreptitiously snuck in TG references in previous blogs, the most blatant example being my blog on sexual sadism that I entitled Entertainment Through Pain – the name of TG’s most recent ‘best of’ album).

I have no idea how much any of you reading this knows about TG, and if you do know about them, you will no doubt be aware that listening to them is an experience (to say the least) and they were the first (and best) group to make ‘industrial music’ (in fact they coined the term and formed their own record label Industrial Records). TG’s live shows (which incidentally were all recorded and all made commercially available to buy albeit in limited editions) were notorious and highly confrontational. They featured highly provocative and disturbing imagery including hard-core pornography and scenes from Nazi concentration camps. TG continually said that that their mission was “to challenge and explore the darker and obsessive sides of the human condition rather than to make attractive music”. This they did to great effect!

I’ll start with a brief history. TG grew out of the ‘performance art’ group COUM Transmissions in the mid-1970s. COUM Transmissions comprised Genesis P-Orridge (born Neil Megson in 1950) and Cosey Fanni Tutti (born Christine Newby in 1951), and both took a great interest in radical counter-culture. TG officially formed in 1975 when Chris Carter (born 1953) and Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson (1955-2010) joined Genesis and Cosey. The final performance by COUM Transmissions was the highly controversial show Prostitution at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts Gallery in September 1976. The final show featured transvestite guards, a female stripper, and used tampons in glass. In the print media, Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Fairburn famously called the group “wreckers of civilisation” (which eventually became the title of their 1999 biography by Simon Ford). Even their name is subversive – ‘Throbbing Gristle’ is actually Yorkshire slang for a penile erection. Roni Sarig in the 1998 book The Secret History of Rock: The Most Influential Bands You’ve Never Heard, notes that in relation to their propensity to shock audiences:

“[Throbbing Gristle] spent a number of years shocking and provoking even the most open-minded members of the avant-garde art world with shows featuring body fluids, dead animal parts, and nude photos of Cosey (a part-time stripper), that pushed the limits of obscenity and taboo. By the mid-‘70s, the group…determined that the best avenue for continuing their cultural assault was music. [They used] an array of instruments (most of which they couldn’t play), as well as tape machines and various electronic effects”.

There are dozens of TG recordings available but the most well known LPs are arguably The Second Annual Report, D.o.A. – The Third and Final Report, 20 Jazz Funk Greats, and Heathen Earth (and if you want to just dip in and see what all the fuss is about try The Taste of TG featuring on the front cover a manipulation of a still from the Pasolini film adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom). They broke up in 1981 and reformed again in 2004 (until 2010).

Their musical performances were often improvised but there were certainly sonic soundscapes that could be described as actual ‘songs’. Most of the fans’ favourites covered extreme, controversial and/or provocative subjects and lyrics including (but not limited to): sado–masochism (Discipline), masturbation (Five Knuckle Shuffle), ejaculation (Something Came Over Me), sexual manipulation (Persuasion), the Moors murderers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady (Very Friendly), the gassing of Jews in Nazi Germany (Zyklon B Zombie), Nazism (National Affront), misogyny (We Hate You Little Girls), school bullying (Blood On The Floor), burns victims (Hamburger Lady), ultra-violence (Subhuman, Dead Ed, and Hit By A Rock), castration and foetus eating (Slug Bait), and suicide (Weeping). A really good paper written by Dr. Danielle Kirby in a 2011 issue of Literature and Aesthetics highlighted the cultural space that TG’s music inhabited:

“[Throbbing Gristle] both musically and magically, constitute an integral element of what Christopher Partridge calls ‘occulture’. Occulture, a neologism attributed to Genesis P-Orridge, has come to express a socio-spiritual milieu encompassing ‘those often hidden, rejected and oppositional beliefs and practices associated with esotericism, Theosophy, mysticism, New Age, [and] Paganism’ amongst other subcultural ideas and lifestyles”.

Psychologically they are simply one of the most interesting groups I have ever come across. They lived life on the fringes, and much of their performance whether it was art, drama and/or music was extreme and morally provocative. In one interview, Genesis P-Orridge revealed perhaps one of his most depraved artistic improvisations:

“I used to do things like stick severed chicken’s heads over my penis, and then try to masturbate them, whilst pouring maggots all over it…At the ICA 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 [out and] then [I] licked it off the not-clean concrete floor. Then I got a 10-inch nail and tried to swallow it, which made me vomit. Then Cosey helped me lick the vomit off the floor. And she was naked and trying to sever her vagina to her navel with a razor blade and she injected blood into her vagina which then trickled out, and we 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 then used for enemas. Then 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’.”

I have no idea if my brief look into the world of Throbbing Gristle has totally put you off exploring their art and music, but as a group, their artistic mission and philosophy complements much of the more extreme academic material that I have featured in my blog.

Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Cooper, D. (2012). Sypha presents … Music from the Death Factory: A Throbbing Gristle primer. Located at: http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/sypha-presents-music-from-death-factory.html?zx=c19a3a826c3170a7

Ford, S. (1999). Wreckers of Civilization: The Story of Coum Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle. London: Black Dog Publishing.

Kirby, D. (2011). Transgressive representations: Satanic ritual abuse, Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, and First Transmission. Literature and Aesthetics, 21, 134-149.

Kromhout, M. (2007). ‘The Impossible Real Transpires’ – The Concept of Noise in the Twentieth Century: a Kittlerian Analysis. Located at: http://www.mellekromhout.nl/wp-content/uploads/The-Impossible-Real-Transpires.pdf

Sarig, R. (1998). The Secret History of Rock: The Most Influential Bands You’ve Never Heard Of. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications.

Walker, J.A. (2009). Cosey Fanni Tutti & Genesis P-Orridge in 1976: Media frenzy, Prostitution-style, Art Design Café, August 10. Located at: http://www.artdesigncafe.com/cosey-fanni-tutti-genesis-p-orridge-1-2009

Wells, S. (2007). A Throbbing Gristle primer. The Guardian, May 27. Located at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2007/may/29/athrobbinggristleprimer