YOUR BODY IS A BATTLEGROUND: The Breyer P-Orridge Pandrogyne and the
Re-conditioning of Gender Stereotypes
In my first article for the Vagenda [in January 2012), I looked at how gender
and ideas of tribal femininity were used by the band The Slits to produce a
variation on punk rock that was as free and loose as their revision of previous
models of how women making music should behave. However, it was ultimately argued
that although The Slits were of instrumental importance in the emancipation of musicians that happened to be women[1]
and to perceptions of their efforts made by both music fans and peers alike,
women in music nonetheless continue to be defined and their creative output so
often validated, primarily through their gender in a way that men are not.
Therefore, in order to further clarify my position on both
this matter, as well as amidst my esteemed Vagenda collaborators and their opinions
on the relationship between women and perpetuating ideals of ‘culture’, I would
like to now explore the work of a different artist. The figure in question has
explored gender in an extremely physical and terrifyingly brave way through
forms of bodily alteration and genetic experimentation in order to break down
notions of social conditioning and prescribed ideas about social and sexual
behaviour informed by outmoded, yet prevailing, gender stereotypes. When
propagated ideas of identity have become a prescribed set of formulae based on
ghastly visions of accepted normal behaviour for the sexes, when widespread
assumptions based on vacuum-packed models of gender and the body becomes, to
quote Barbara Kruger’s 1989 collage, ‘a battleground’, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge has made human genetics and biology the
terrain for the fight.
P-Orridge is perhaps best known as the founding pioneer of
Industrial music and core member of the genre’s ground-breaking collective,
Throbbing Gristle. With members Chris Carter, Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson and
Cosey Fanni Tutti, the curiously-monikered oat enthusiast (no, seriously)
P-Orridge was responsible for producing some of the earliest examples of
synthesised electronica and noise music. The group’s sonic experiments were
more like art projects using music than music per se, the quartet manipulating
ideas of music itself, but also its industry and the structure of ‘the rock
band’ as a medium like any other. Throbbing Gristle sought to create a
‘metabolic music’ drawing on the experiential engagement at the heart of Andy
Warhol’s inter-media show ‘the Exploding Plastic Inevitable’, in which he
collaborated with The Velvet Underground. The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, or
EPI, was a travelling music, light and dance extravaganza defined by, ironically,
a hurly-whirly mess of indefinable, kaleidoscopic elements, namely movie
projections, flickering lights, sirens and found sounds, and, of course, live
jams from the Velvets themselves. The EPI sought to collapse the barrier
between the performer and the spectator, the participator and the passive
audience member.
It is this that P-Orridge has consistently brought to
projects as diverse as Throbbing Gristle (and prior formation, controversial
performance art group, ‘COUM Transmissions’), pop group Psychic TV (which
played on the idea of a musical cult), and, more recently, Thee Majesty and
P-Orridge’s independent artwork.
Following on from a formidable career in the underground
music scenes, in the 1990s, P-Orridge, with partner Lady Jaye Breyer, created
an artistic being called the Breyer P-Orridge ‘pandrogyne’ through which, by
altering their personal appearances to resemble one another, sought to create a
third sex. P-Orridge and Breyer not only dressed like one another through
matching outfits and hair styles, but underwent extensive cosmetic surgery and
hormone injections to assimilate themselves into a single entity. Through the
pandrogyne, P-Orridge has abdicated the use of the ‘he’ pronoun form and is now
to be understood through the ‘s/he’ or h/er’ format, the forward slash both a
grammatical rupture and yet the boundary at which the two genders meet and dissolve
one another’s absolutism. Rather than operating like the Freudian doppelganger
as a means to underline the presence of the (singular) ego through repetition,
the Breyer P-Orridge pandrogyne acknowledges the split but attempts
reconciliation through the twinship of these two separate individuals in a
completely new being.
Lady Jayer
Breyer and Genesis P-Orridge: The Breyer P-Orridge Pandrogyne
(Image: http://www.letoilemagazine.com/2012/04/06/letalk-genesis-p-orridge/)
I should probably highlight the fact that the pandrogyne was
obviously not conceived of as a tool of Feminist critique or, more broadly, as
an idea with which to counter female representation in the media. However, I
feel that that which propelled its establishment – essentially an unwillingness
to fall subject to expected standards – are certainly comparable to the
concerns of the Vagenda and of myself.
It’s a fascinating concept, and one that, in spite of Lady
Jaye’s unfortunate death in 2007, P-Orridge continues to embody today. P-Orridge
has always demonstrated a heightened sensitivity to the idea of social
behaviour and concepts of identity as highly conditioned, and even ‘engineered’,
oppressive constructs. If this all smacks a little of L. Ron Hubbard’s
Dianetics dogma, there’s no need to worry. The concept of ‘de-conditioning’ and
‘re-auditing’ is indeed an central component within both Scientology and Pandrogeny,
only P-Orridge’s idea seeks to re-engineer an idea of behavioural identity
through a kind of human genetic collage between
consenting individuals rather than demand spiritual funding in the form of
gross monetary donations from members. P-Orridge has never suggested that
pandrogeny is a belief to which all humankind should submit, especially since
it is, fundamentally, based on a romance, on h/er relationship with Lady Jaye.
It just so happens that the pandrogyne makes for a brave and fearless example
in the quest for continual change and evolution touted by P-Orridge as a form
of rebellion against prescribed standards, in not only cultural and musical
spheres but in society more generally.
P-Orridge’s life and work have, in a sense, become the same
thing through the fulfilment of the pandrogyne. Furthermore, through the
establishment of this third sex, even as an idea, it becomes less
straightforward for gender to become a stricture or label on artistic
creativity and on everyday life. I don’t mean to say the pandrogyne is the
answer to all problems regarding gender inequality since it encourages the
merging of two sexes rather than their rightful democratisation. However, I do
feel that it makes for a mighty call-to-arms against the ‘supposed-to’
attitudes of society, their benefactors and their terrible modes of
transmission that inundate the media today.
Recommended reading:
Breyer-Porridge. ‘Pandrogeny - An Attitude Discussed’, 2010,
http://www.genesisbreyerporridge.com/pandrogyne.html
And in fact, any of the texts credited to P-Orridge and the Breyer P-Orridge
Pandrpogyne are worth a look, especially for the unorthodox pronoun formats and
other curious verbal idiosyncrasies
Ford, S. Wreckers of
Civilisation: The Story of Coum Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle, London : Black Dog, 1999
P-Orridge, G. Painful
But Fabulous: The Lives and Art of Genesis P-Orridge , New York
Walker, J. A. ‘COUM Transmissions to Psychic TV (1987)’,
orig. in Cross-overs: Art into Pop, Pop
into Art, accessed online on 19/05/11 & 03/09/2011 at art design café:
http://www.artdesigncafe.com/COUM-Transmissions-Psychic-TV
[1] This
italicised term is offered as an alternative to the frankly to the deplorable
rubric ‘women (or female) musicians to which it is rarely, if ever, considered
necessary to use the masculine counterpart when referring to male artists.
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