Art Sex Music Page 15

  John’s musical and technical contribution to COUM had helped so much by enabling us to expand and transform some of our existing projects from visual to amplified audiovisual pieces, and we received an invitation to perform ‘Marcel Duchamp’s Next Work’ as part of the 4th International Festival of Electronic Music and Mixed Media at the Stedelijk Academy in Ghent, and at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Both shows fell within a week of each other so we coordinated with Paul Woodrow for him to fly from Canada to the UK and travel together in Doris with me, Gen, Biggles, Joseph and our equipment. John didn’t come along and Fizzy stayed at the studio to look after the animals for us – and take the opportunity to wear as his daily garb the black latex wart-covered rubber suit Jules had made for us. He liked rubber and said he was practising for when he and I went to perform as COUM in Gross-Gerau.

  The Ghent trip was fraught with money issues. We got paid expenses but there were poster costs sprung on us when we got there, which reduced our food funds considerably, and we were all grumbling about it, as were our stomachs. I distracted myself by getting Godfried (the organiser) to take me to the local (and very imposing) medieval Gravensteen Castle, which he’d told me had an impressive dungeon. It didn’t disappoint, but it was a disturbed place: its cruel history was palpable, which fed my morbid curiosity for horrendously gruesome torture devices. I left feeling both amazed and sickened by the ingenuity of human beings at devising methods of inflicting excruciating pain on one another.

  The next day the inaugural performance of ‘Marcel Duchamp’s Next Work’ took place, my recollection of which is overshadowed by our Brussels show a few days later. My main memory of the Ghent show was the installation, when I found myself treated to the meditative, soothing and melancholy Gavin Bryars endlessly looping ‘Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet’.

  26 January 1974

  A beautiful piece we have in Marcel Duchamp. So pleased with it. Joseph too. Herve loved it, sat, should I say lay down and looked happy watching the slides. Henriette took part, lovely Henriette. Big critic lady came and congratulated me on the superb slides. Quite embarrassed I was. What can I say? Apparently she was the art ents critic for Belgium’s biggest newspaper. Didn’t bother us all that much really but Herve was thrilled to bits. Herve and lovely Henriette are perfect hosts x x x x

  Two days after our Ghent show, Biggles drove us on to Brussels for the second Duchamp performance. Moniek Darge, the organiser, had arranged for us to stay at the home of the director of the Palais des Beaux-Arts (and friend of Stockhausen), Hervé Thys, and his wife, Henriette.

  We arrived just as it was getting dark, which probably played a part in our feeling that we’d arrived on the set of a Hammer Horror film. Their house was in the grounds of the Thys family estate, a large old chateau with huge, tall and locked metal entrance gates. Biggles had pulled up so one of us could go and get someone to let us in. We didn’t set foot out of the van, nor did we need to ring any bell … On hearing the van pull up, four ferocious and very angry German shepherd dogs appeared in the courtyard, barking and snarling and throwing themselves at the gate in a vain attempt to attack us.

  I wasn’t in the best mood for the performance the next day. I’d had little sleep, not because of the dogs but because me and Paul had come down with really bad colds. Once I got into the venue and saw the amazing space we had at our disposal, though, I perked up as excitement took over. The Duchamp piece was a work of two parts and was performed by a twelve-piece ensemble arranged in a circle, each with near-identical instruments – twelve Duchamp-style bicycle wheels mounted on stools, each put through a contact mic and a quadrophonic PA system. We provided a selection of tools for playing the instrument, ranging from hearth brushes, screwdrivers, cutlery and paper to drumsticks, violin bows and pieces of metal. There were no rules about how to play, just two separate scores that provided a point of entry. Like the Ghent show, COUM members took a wheel each and we co-opted other people to play the rest, including Henriette. The score for the first part was a pack of playing cards from which each person selected at random, using the cards numerically as rhythmic time signatures or interpreting them any way they liked – with the option to not use them at all. The first half sounded quite erratic, as people felt their way tentatively until they got into their stride. I scored the second part of the work and had someone replace me at my wheel so I could work the projections. I had spent quite some time creating and photographing graphic images of varying colours from an assortment of source materials, then had the transparencies mounted into slide cases to project as the score for the players to interpret in an imaginative way. The visual score changed the mood from disparate actions and sounds to one of subtle and sensitive collaboration by having the ensemble focus together on the visual projections, responding individually but always mindful of being one element of a unified twelve-piece unit. And that unit extended to me as I used my slides in response to the sounds, lingering on one or switching slides slowly or swiftly to bring some rhythmic movement.

  The reaction of the Belgian music critic was complimentary. Such praise was new for us – we were so used to being slagged off. I’ve always found it easier to handle criticism than praise, so much so that I can recall and deal with the bad things people have said far more readily and easily than the good. Either way, I’m not hanging on anyone else’s opinion.

  *

  As a consequence of our ongoing and substantial lifestyle changes, the COUM approach was becoming less ad hoc and more considered, largely due to the influence of my magazine work, which shifted our public actions in a new direction – the subject of sex. Up to that point our sexual activities had been private. Through modelling, my public nakedness wasn’t an issue for me.

  ‘The COUMing of Age’ at the Oval House Theatre in London was the first COUM action that involved nudity; it proved to be a huge turning point as it also caught the attention of someone who was to become one of my closest and dearest friends. While we were sitting in the Oval House cafeteria having lunch prior to performing the show, we were approached by a smartly dressed young guy who had a camera hanging around his neck and was cradling the lens in his left hand. He quietly and very politely introduced himself.

  ‘Hello. My name is Peter Christopherson. I’m really interested in your show. Would you mind if I take some photographs tonight?’

  There was something about the way he sidled up to us that was a bit creepy but also made me smile and say, ‘Oooh, you’re sleazy …’ – and so ‘Sleazy’ became his name. It seems a rather unexceptional meeting, considering the impact we were to have on one another’s lives, but it was the best thing about ‘The COUMing of Age’.

  The show was an odd collection of innocent, clichéd sexual fantasies and scenarios – but with twists. We took the sugary-sweet image of a virgin-like girl on a swing revealing brief glimpses of her knickers as her skirt blew in the wind and presented me naked on a pale-pink swing hung centre stage from the theatre ceiling. That was all still pretty ‘sweet’ until … as I was pushed higher and higher to send me above the audience, I peed through the heart-shaped hole we’d cut in the seat, releasing an arc of warm wetness as I swung back and forth, slowly coming to a dribbling standstill.

  One of my other ‘roles’ was a bit of a busman’s holiday – a nude model being photographed by a lechy photographer, played very well by Foxtrot. Its purpose was to show the behind-the-scenes process of creating the finished fantasy magazine image. I was captive in an eight-foot cylindrical cage covered in blood-streaked, flesh-coloured latex tentacles (borrowed from Jules), modelling under Foxtrot’s direction until released to wander the stage striking various glamour poses while a girl on a trapeze ladder performed nude acrobatics hanging by her knees, then by her ankles. There was no safety net for her, nor for Hermine Demoriane when she performed a tightrope striptease, so it was risky to say the least – art and aesthetic riding roughshod over health and safety.

  We had Hermine perform in black l
ight and changed her costume to Day-Glo colours worn over a full black leotard, so as she removed her clothes she effectively disappeared. A striptease revealing nothing. Simultaneously me and Gen were dressed as black dogs set against a backdrop of a house and tree outlined in Day-Glo paint. All you could see of us in the black light was our Day-Glo genitals as we performed doggie sex – two huge dangling balls and a fat fourteen-inch cock pumping away at my glowing lady-dog parts. We also gave a nod to the male artist painting ‘the female nude’, with me stood exposing only my bare torso, framed by a rectangular hole cut in a large black polythene sheet. Dressed in only an artist’s smock and French beret, with palette and brush in hand, Gen proceeded to paint me.

  John didn’t perform in the show front-of-house; he was doing the vital job of lights and sound, playing his home-built synthesiser, but came down to take a bow and join the end-of-show throwing of polystyrene granules everywhere. It was the last time we ever did that … It took us hours to sweep up.

  28 January 1974

  Well here I am at last Cosey’s first pubic appearance without any.

  At last! I finally got my naked image in a magazine article: ‘PROSTITUTION’ in Curious magazine. That felt so right, having Curious as my first point of entry.

  My pubes were just growing back after I’d shaved them for a Health and Efficiency magazine shoot … Well, I say ‘I’d shaved them’, but in fact it was the editor who shaved me, insisting it had to be to his particular standard. I’d said I would shave myself. I didn’t like the idea of someone using a razor blade down there and poking about. But he’d have none of it, saying that he must do it as he didn’t want any cuts, and explaining how difficult it would be for me to completely remove all traces of hair or get into every nook and cranny. The word ‘cuts’ leaped out and made me even more nervous but if I wanted the modelling job I had to let him do it. It was very disconcerting looking down at him as he set to work. The whole procedure seemed to smack as much of fetishism as the aesthetic, especially as his depilation rule didn’t apply to men. He was very gentle and knew what he was doing, carefully parting my lips to get every little hair. He’d obviously done it many times before – unlike me. It was my first time and it had been a tough decision because shaving off your pubes seriously affected the number of nude modelling jobs you could get, simply because (unlike today) shaved pussies were a niche market and you’d be out of work until your pubes grew back.

  Even though I’d tried to keep my art and modelling separate, there were times they merged, mainly because some of the people I met through my sex work were really interesting. Tuppy Owens was one such person and she came to see the COUM show at the Oval House. She was the top female sex publisher in England, writing and publishing her own books, writing for sex magazines, and (still) a very outspoken campaigner for sexual freedom and sexual health. Unlike now, most of the magazine sex articles and fantasy stories of the 1970s were written by men, usually under a female pseudonym or by using a sexy female as a front. The idea of women writing about sex was a turn-on: it attracted male readers but misled them into thinking what they read was a woman’s perspective on sex. It gave scope for men to write about their sexual fantasies, which would appeal to their mostly male readers, but which also had the unhealthy effect of upholding male attitudes to women, male sex fantasies and notions of women’s sexual likes and dislikes. Considering all that, it was great to discover Tuppy was around and I felt an affinity with and respect for her, not only because of her pioneering spirit.

  I often visited Tuppy’s place in South Street, Mayfair, to have dinner, to audition or just to chat. Living in Mayfair sounded very posh so on my first visit there I was curious as to why Tuppy told me to go to the back entrance of the seven-storey apartment block and ring the bell. It seemed to take a long time before she answered the door and I was beginning to think she’d gone out when she appeared with her usual smile.

  ‘Follow me,’ she said, and led me to her basement flat, taking me on a long winding walk along corridors lined with industrial-sized water pipes, past huge boilers and through narrow gangways, until we emerged into a small open area that Tuppy and her partner had acquired somehow and made into a compact but very nice and inexpensive living space. A Mayfair address was not always what it seemed.

  I worked for Tuppy on two magazine jobs and as one of the decorative hostesses at the launch of her 1975 Sex Maniac’s Diary at the Bristol Hotel in Mayfair. She put me in a Marilyn Monroe-style blonde wig and I wore my own 1930s ankle-length white-and-green dress split up the leg to the bust line. My name tag read ‘I most certainly am Cosy [sic] of COUM Pornographic Pantomimes’ – ‘pantomime’ being Tuppy’s description of the Oval House show, referred to as such in her ‘Porno Panto’ review that was published alongside my six-page photo spread in the same issue of Alpha magazine. I was pretty ecstatic at the double infiltration, of appearing in both guises, as model and artist.

  Things were beginning to work out at last – perseverance had paid off. Being published in Curious, Health and Efficiency and Alpha magazines spurred me on and I started to keep a record of what magazines I’d worked for and sought them out, aiming to acquire at least two copies of every one I appeared in. It wasn’t easy with magazines working a month or two in advance, or if freelance photographers had sold photos of me to several different magazines. I found it exciting hunting for my artworks on the top shelves of newsagents and in Soho sex shops. The shop owners would look at me suspiciously as I flicked through magazine after magazine, and were very confused when I uttered a triumphant ‘Yesss!’ as I marched to the counter to buy two or more copies of the same magazine.

  8 March 1974

  Dusty and Billie of Rinky Dink came last nite. Should be moving into the house next Saturday.

  The nearest shops for food were in Broadway Market, just a short walk across London Fields, where I walked Tremble every day and always with my hefty bunch of keys in the palm of my hand, in readiness for trouble. I held them so I could strike straight in the eyes of an attacker. I saw it as a necessary precaution in view of the run-ins I’d had with gangs of skinheads and groups of young black guys throwing stones at me and Tremble, or shouting obscenities and threatening to beat me up or rape me – or, as one very young boy who looked about ten yelled, ‘Hey, pinky girl, I’ll fuck you right up the arse!!’

  I was shocked that he’d even think about anal sex at such a young age, but more shocking than that was that he’d referred to me as ‘pinky’. The mention of race was a whole new thing to me. Hackney was very rough in the 1970s and, the young kid aside, I noticed residual elements of racism that disturbed me. And it wasn’t the black gangs – I was used to gangs and threats from Hull – it was the lady park warden who proudly told us she was a former member of Mosley’s Blackshirts and was very vociferous about her beliefs whenever she stopped to talk to us in the park. Then there was Bella, a small, frail-looking, grey-haired old lady who ran the time-warped grocery shop and had a black cat she called Nigger. That alone was unacceptable but she’d go down the market calling, ‘Nigger! Nigger!’, trying to get her cat indoors. I was gobsmacked when I heard her but no one seemed to think anything of it.

  As I was walking through London Fields as usual on my way to Broadway Market, I heard a very familiar Yorkshire accent. I turned around to see two young guys. ‘Nice to hear a Yorkshire accent – where you from?’ I asked.

  We had a great chat. They were in a band called Rinky Dink and the Crystal Set and had just secured a record deal. They’d also been living in a squat in nearby Beck Road and were about to leave. ‘Do you want to take it over when we move out?’ they offered. A three-bedroomed terraced house? Hell yeah!

  It was in a state, with a small leak in the roof and umpteen layers of lino and sodden carpets in the upstairs rooms, mattresses nailed to the walls as soundproofing – but it was such a gift. We moved in as they moved out, making sure the council couldn’t seize the house back and board it up. The whole street wa
s earmarked for demolition and redevelopment, and all council tenants were slowly being relocated. I had big plans for Beck Road. Les was due out of prison in August and we’d talked about him living in one of the rooms. I was happy that we’d have more space for the cats and Tremble to roam, a proper bed at last and our own toilet, even though it was outside. We became Acme tenants (an artists’ housing association), paying £3 a week.

  The house had arrived at a good time: we were fast outgrowing the studio and it was within easy walking distance of both my job at a local clothes factory and Martello Street. The studio became a dedicated workspace and store for our growing collection of performance props and audio equipment. A corner of the rotten floor had finally caved in and we built a raised wooden platform and used it as a stage, setting up the PA and speakers with John for COUM jam sessions and working on material for music gigs.

  2 April 1974

  Wonderful news today. COUM to get a grant of £1500. Could it be an April Fools trick or are we really going to be able to get all our equipment?

  Gen’s copious letter-writing had paid off. We had some money to finance our many ideas and wasted no time putting together a COUM promotional info sheet, with a contact strip of photos from ‘The COUMing of Age’ on one side and on the reverse a COUM statement, CV, press quotes and a notice offering workshops and lectures. The usual address and phone contact details also included COUM Transmissions, now a registered company with directors listed as ‘Cosey Fanni Tutti’ and ‘Genesis P-Orridge’ and a technical director, John Gunni Busck. Despite this seemingly official promotion of COUM as a bona fide group enterprise, there was already a change in focus, from the music and experimental theatrical and environmental installations advertised on the poster to more art action-based work, mostly featuring just me and Gen.