Genesis P-Orridge
Partners in life and art Genesis P-Orridge and Lady Jaye are using their personal relationship as a canvas, the result of that collaboration being a third entity named Breyer P-Orridge.
"We view Breyer P-Orridge as a separate person who is both of us," said Lady Jaye. "Neither of us take credit for the work, the work is a melding of both of our ideas which we would not have had singly."
Breyer P-Orridge is realized through a series of works that incorporates photography, collage and sculpture, utilizing plenty of religious imagery and personal items from the couples' life together. Self-portraiture is also a hallmark of the work — it's just that the self in the portrait is any and all of the three beings involved and the one thing that is clear is that the lines are blurred.
"Both of us are in all of our art," said Jaye. "That third being, Breyer P-Orridge, is always present. Anything other than that, don't even think about it."
The area in which the art project has captured much attention is in the way the couple uses their own bodies as a medium. The two have undergone various cosmetic surgeries in order to achieve a certain unity of appearance, a march towards androgyny or, as they would put it, pandrogyny, which involves more than one person.
The couple combined their own togetherness with the ideas of old collaborators and friends William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin — specifically, their work "The Third Mind," which was an example of writing called "cut-ups." These are texts formed from sections of other texts, physically chopped up and rearranged to create entirely new ones. It is also the name of a concept describing a third entity born of two.
"We were always starting to intuitively dress the same and look at the ways that we felt psychologically bonded," said P-Orridge, "so we took 'The Third Mind and thought 'What if there was a third entity? What if we took ourselves and cut those up — literally and intellectually — and created a being that only exists when the two of us are together, or as a result of the two of us collaborating? What would that do?'"
In the physical side of the work, Jaye has altered her nose and chin to look more like P-Orridge's, while P-Orridge has had cheek implants to resemble Jaye's. These changes have been subtle — friends and family don't really notice them. It's much easier to notice the breast implants, however.
"We got them on Valentine's Day years ago. It was very romantic," said Jaye. "It was really the start of the project; Djin had not made any major moves to looking more feminine or androgynous aside from solely cosmetic ones, make-up and styling. We both got implants at the same time, the same size, but because our bodies are shaped differently — Genesis has broader shoulders and was heavier at the time — he had larger implants put in, so proportionately she would look more like me. Since that's happened, Djin's lost a lot of weight, so now I'm the curvy one."
The idea is that sexual roles are outdated — as is the societal idea of what is beauty — and the two embraced these beliefs as they moved into this realm of body modification as artwork. They did not want to conform to any ideal other than their own — and they didn't want it to be viewed in terms of traditional sex changes. This would count as further separation in opposite directions — instead, they are puzzle pieces in unity, creating one piece together.
"I would really prefer us to not have to lose anything," said Jaye. "If I could have a penis attached, I would do it tomorrow, but for Djin to lose any part of the body that could give pleasure, that's not the idea."
If all this seems outrageous, it's best to look back on P-Orridge's other work — a more than 30-year history of shaping the industrial world's mainstream through his explorations as a member of the counter culture. He may be one of the most culturally significant people you've never heard of.
P-Orridge is considered one of the creators of industrial music, a term now used by plenty of bands, but, in the late 1970s, pretty much the providence of P-Orridge's group Throbbing Gristle. They were the first band to ever use the term "industrial" in regard to their music and their philosophy and their style and ethos have been evoked and copied ever since in music and youth culture.
His next band, Psychic TV, continued the work, with explorations in house music in its early days and even some more commercial forms — their song "Roman P." was heard far and wide in a Volkswagen commercial several years back. Both bands still exist in occasional forms.
It was in the mid-'80s that P-Orridge gained further notoriety as the prime mover in something called the "Modern Primitive" movement, which celebrated body piercing and tattoos as a reclamation of the self, a ritualistic adornment with deeper meaning that stretched back to primitive man. A book was published, including interviews and photos of P-Orridge, and distributed largely in record stores. It was a surprise hit for the company and became the element that started the water drips that would soon build-up such pressure in youth culture that it would tear down floodgates.
"We had no idea that it would be so incredibly influential," said P-Orridge. "When you look at it chronologically, that's when it exploded a-cross the planet. Now there's a piercing and tattoo shop in almost every village everywhere you go — it's incredible."
The aesthetics that P-Orridge pioneered are obvious in any mall with a Hot Topic, where teenagers wear the trappings of a lifestyle that they may not even comprehend the origins of — it just all looks cool to them.
"We walk along and Jaye says 'I blame you for this,'" said P-Orridge.
Given P-Orridge's history, is it too far afield to think that in two decades, teens will be moving towards a surgical androgyny?
"Somebody once asked me 'What do you do?' and I flippantly answered 'I'm a cultural engineer,'" said P-Orridge. "With hindsight, I kind of am — but if I got too self-conscious about it, it wouldn't work."
Given the trickle-down effect of P-Orridge's previous efforts, certain observations the couple has made in what might be considered "fringe" elements of society as well as "ordinary" ones certainly do have a power to them.
Interest in and attraction to androgyny is certainly on the rise, from circumstantial evidence like the boom in personal ads from pre-operative transsexual escorts seeking straight customers to the phenomenon of role-playing on the Internet, where no one is necessarily who or what they seem — or, conversely, perhaps they are exactly who they are, free from the physical shell. The existence of Breyer P-Orridge is, perhaps, taking the more common notion of role-playing to the next level.
"You can be playing a role, which is great if that role is liberating," said Jaye, "if it makes them feel more comfortable in their own skin, I think that's fantastic, I think that's what everyone should do. They should let their personality and their lifestyle reflect how they feel inside. There's a lot of internal conflict that happens when people are forced into roles that are really not reflecting their inner feelings. People get sick in all sorts of ways."
There is much religious imagery in their art utilizing Jesus and Christian iconography and the implication of its inclusion is clear — rebirth is imminent and Breyer P-Orridge is the result. However, personal rebirth is not the only idea being addressed here.
"Usually there's evidence all over the popular culture of an innate sense of what should happen next that goes on within everybody and it manifests itself through different ways," said P-Orridge, "through the sex industry, through the Internet and through the acceptability of new gender and identity stereotypes in the media. What builds up is a kind of pressure toward and evolutionary lurch, a sudden very radical mutation. What we're trying to do is add to the pressure of that mutation, whatever that might be and I think that definitely happens in many different ways."
It's the quest for the next evolutionary step that fuels much of the performance and artwork around Breyer P-Orridge, taking something that is common to many people and turning it into a call to the future. For instance, P-Orridge thinks that the idea of a third entity is something that is applicable to many couples, without the physical creation of that entity — it's just that taking that major step is their way of opening paths to the future.
"To be quite frank, we are also encouraging people to do what what we're doing," said P-Orridge. "We would hope to encourage and find and locate genetic engineers and people who understand the process of replication and actually redesign the potential of the species. If we want to go into space — which we should as a species — we're going to have to be physically different."
This could mean any form of genetic modification and P-Orridge advocates cross-species fertilization in order to achieve the traits that are needed — the human body, he believes, should not be considered sacred.
"I think that's a great mistake we make as a species to think that this is the end of the evolutionary chain," said P-Orridge. "It's not. It's the end of a primitive evolutionary chain and it's time to become contemporary modern and accept responsibility for ourselves as a species and redesign ourselves for better or worse."
Because the root of their art is their life together, consideration must be given to the scope of the project — that is, the physical boundaries.
"Conceptually, we're always working on it," said Jaye. "Surgically, there are limitations, there's only so far we can go. It also depends on resources. Surgery is expensive and we don't want to compromise our health in any kind of a major way. Also, the physical, it's gestural, we're never going to look exactly like one another and that's fine, but we wanted to make an effort and we wanted to commit ourselves to the project by actually putting our bodies on the line. We figured there was no greater sacrifice."
In the end, Breyer P-Orridge is an attempt to frame the larger picture on a more personal level — and to expect no more than what they are willing to do themselves.
"I think we can only ultimately change the world by example and by fearlessly embracing what could happen," said P-Orridge.
