- COUM Transmissions
COUM Transmissions was a
performance art group interested in pushing boundaries, influenced byDada and theMerry Pranksters .CT was a whimsical, eccentric as well as confrontational band and
performance art group, from Hull,Yorkshire – acollective the constants of which were its founder,Genesis P-Orridge , andCosey Fanni Tutti , who joined in early 1970. It had a rotating membership, not atypical of the 1960s, and included bothintellectual and criminal elements and existed formally from 1969 until 1976. Members over its existence included Foxtrot Echo (aka Echo Foxxtrot), Fizzey Paet, Ray Harvey and "Spydee Garmantel". Although Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson and Chris Carter were acquaintances of the collective they did not technically join up until COUM had morphed intoThrobbing Gristle .The collective, as a band, opened for
Hawkwind , got interest fromJohn Peel and were played on his radio show.During its final performance, in '76, the occasion was also the birth of the four-member
Throbbing Gristle , which is a slang word, from Hull, meaning erection.COUM's work took on different directions and lives of its own. Examples include Cosey's pornographic modelling career and, most notably, the industrial music group
Throbbing Gristle .TG dissolved and the parts went on to form their own projects and projections. As
Psychic TV ,Chris And Cosey , Coil,Thee Majesty , Genesis, Cosey, Chris and Sleazy continue to elaborate and expand upon what they originally discovered back in the late sixties/early seventies together.The last official COUM performances and art shows took place in 1976. At or around that time, Genesis proclaimed he was through with performance art. Cosey, on the other hand, felt she had only just begun. Though she feels the name COUM to be "tainted" now and unusable, she has been known to say her individual projects are still a part of the COUM family of workFact|date=April 2008. In fact she now has a website called [http://www.coum.co.uk/ Coum]
A definitive documentary work on COUM Transmissions is the book "Wreckers of Civilisation", by Simon Ford, a curator at the
Victoria and Albert Museum ,London . Black Dog Publishing Company, July 2000.
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