Genesis P-Orridge

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (1950–2020) was an English artist, musician, and cultural provocateur whose pioneering work in performance, music, and gender challenged the boundaries of identity and artistic practice. As founder of the radical performance collective COUM Transmissions, P-Orridge emerged in the 1970s avant-garde with works that confronted social taboos, culminating in the controversial Prostitution exhibition at London’s ICA.

P-Orridge co-founded Throbbing Gristle, widely credited with inventing industrial music, and later fronted the experimental multimedia group Psychic TV, integrating esoteric practice, music, and video. They also founded the occult network Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY), blending chaos magic, ritual, and counterculture into a globally influential framework.

In later years, alongside their partner Lady Jaye, P-Orridge initiated the Pandrogeny Project—a radical exploration of identity through body modification, with the aim of becoming a single "pandrogyne" entity. The project dissolved gender binaries and redefined the body as a medium of spiritual and political transformation.

Over their five-decade career, P-Orridge’s output spanned more than 200 music releases and numerous exhibitions across media. Celebrated and condemned in equal measure, they remain a foundational figure in contemporary performance art and post-industrial culture.