writing - visual - misc - huh?
the first time i heard throbbing gristle they were still somehow aurally shocking, although this would have already been in the early 90s - over a decade after the group disbanded. the intensity and sincerity of their recordings is impressive, even in the age of merzbow.
simon ford's wreckers of civilisation: the story of coum transmissions & throbbing gristle brings us back to the late 60s and begins unraveling the chronology of performance art and industrial music history.
some years ago i did a presentation on art deviance for a sociology class. some of the examples included the vienna aktionists, works like fetus earrings (can't recall the artist, though i see someone has parodied this idea), and coum. even all these years later this kind of work still has the incredible power to disturb and shock. it confirmed that many people have been exposed to extremes of violence and sex in film but in a typically non-confrontational context. car crashes, gunfights, torture, rape - all hollywoodised.
coum constructed their own contexts and the audience witnessed transgressive acts that worked to the edges of, for them, non-existent boundaries. ford's book documents this process and the personal transformation that genesis p-orridge and cosey fanni tutti went through in the process.
about half the book is dedicated to coum's history and the second half focuses on the work of throbbing gristle and the birth of the industrial records scene.
wreckers does an excellent post-mortem on gristle's output, and documents the birth, growth, and death of the now legendary group. while p-orridge plays off the end of gristle as an inevitability because of their non-music industry mandate, chris carter and cosey suggest it was bound to happen because of unresolved interpersonal matters.
regardless of the termination of their mission, there is still nothing like throbbing gristle. their albums are some of the most uneasy and paranoid visions of a post-1984 world.
reading this book, it seems strange that it ends in 1981. each member has had an interesting career after gristle. particularly, some of psychic tv's work and the peculiar world of coil.
more recently, cbc's brave new waves did an interview with coil's peter christopherson (58 min, 16/05/03), in which he comes across as a perfectly respectable lad who is fairly shy and very courteous. worth a listen for discussion of his work with coil and artistic ideas in general.
while reading wreckers i remembered contacting genesis some years ago, asking him for his mailing address to send him some mail art. he was most obliging and personable, and it is this sincerity that i most respect. his life of and through art is not a put-on. while he understands how to exploit the masses, he works towards his own ends. you get the sense that for him it is art or death.
when genesis used to occasionally co-host the "infinity factory" with disinfo's richard metzger he sometimes came off as a bit flakey or spaced out, but he always tried to earnestly engage the guests and contribute to the dialogue. then again, this may have been his playing on the notion of being a talk show host.
gristle is doing a reunion event this summer in england, 14th -16th May 2004. sadly, i won't be there until later in the summer and will miss it. it's a multi-day event with the likes of richard h. kirk, merzbow, jim o'rourke, lydia lunch, and rare derek jarman films. this would be three mind-shifting days i'm sad i'll miss. alas, there's always the recordings.
{February 13, 2004 04:19 PM}