Genesis and Lady Jaye, Change Thee Way to Perceive and Change All Memory
Sady Sullivan
There was a time when feminist and queer theory confidently used a language of possibility, dismantling Cartesian dichotomies all over the place. Artists, academics and others privileged enough to have time to think, took it as their responsibility to imagine for us all–and in so doing, brought about– the utopian future we humans deserve.
Many of us have since lost that sense of optimism; despite living in a world where everyday we see the realization of technologies that were once science fiction. Thankfully, Breyer P-Orridge, the merged identity of two activist performance artists Genesis and Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge, keep the fire of our collective agency burning. "It’s time for the [human] species to take control of what it wants to become. Artists demonstrate new possibilities–that’s our job."
Breyer P-Orridge’s current exhibition at Participant Inc. is their first in the U.S. and a welcome portal to the collaboration’s living art. The space is full of gold-leafed iconography, gory-but-beautiful surgery photos (think Orlan), and collective-consciousness-invoking sculptures using skulls and severed wolf heads. Then there is the preponderance of glistening knives replacing tongues and the graphic photo collages, both of which recall dungeons (for consensual play, of course). The objects are intriguing but it is Breyer P-Orridge’s practice of Breaking Sex that is the show’s true strength.
The binary gender system divides (and conquers) us all into limited masculine and feminine camps. Thanks to the brave activism and increased visibility of intersex (the preferred term over the misleading "hermaphrodite"), gender-queer and transgender people, we now understand that the biological definitions of Male and Female are more social construction than scientific fact. Breyer P-Orridge believes that "the binary systems embedded in society, culture and biology are the root cause of conflict and aggression, which in turn justify and maintain oppressive control systems and divisive hierarchies." Genesis and Lady Jaye subvert this system with their lived-art experiment that is Breyer P-Orridge. Genesis (assigned male at birth) and Lady Jaye (assigned female) unite to form the unisexual identity that is Breyer P-Orridge by integrating their two egos and their distinct genders into one. Both use modern medical techniques to try to look as much like each other as possible. They call this being pandrogynous, for positive androgyny. "It’s a blissfully romantic project," says Genesis. Living as a collaborative identity, the artist(s) urge others to turn "away from the animal and the past, towards the divinely pure and compassionate sentient Being of a future."
Many works in the show are sigils, magical signs that control the power they symbolize, and so, engaging with the work brings one into collusion, willing or not, with Breyer P-Orridge’s mission to consciously participate in the next step of human evolution.
Genesis P-Orridge has been influencing artistic evolution for three decades. In 1969, Genesis founded the performance art group COUM Transmissions. He is best known for naming "industrial" music, a movement started by his band Throbbing Gristle. He collaborated with beat writers William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin whose "cut up" technique (words cut randomly from pages are used to create prose) continues to influence his work. "Identity is a fiction and to move from literature and art to the body-as-canvas is a logical step, so, we thought ‘Let’s cut ourselves up and see what happens!’"
He began collaborating with Lady Jaye almost immediately after they met over ten years ago in New York where she was involved in the art and music scene, working with Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, and performing off-Broadway. Genesis was lucky to find an inspiring partner equally prepared as he to commit totally, mind and body, to their ideas. The passion behind Breyer P-Orrdige’s life-as-art is that a peaceful future is possible for us all: "What better way to become pacifist than create a third being, an amalgamation."
Breyer P-Orridge "represents the deliberate embracing of mutation and change," which is a powerful statement in this regressive age of fear and fundamentalism. "It’s not as much about glamour and gender," says Breyer P-Orridg e. "It’s more to do with the mutation of the species in order to reclaim our miraculous possibility."
