Film Pass Give-Away:
The Ballad Of Genesis And Lady Jaye
Rick: I love Throbbing Gristle. Love ’em. I love the individual projects (and paired, etc.) that have come after. I love the myriad projects that have been influenced by the mere existence of T.G. (not all of ’em, but y’ know). So, it’s incredible that this film is playing in Hartford and equally incredible that I now get to offer pairs of free passes to the first three (3) people (3×2=6 people getting in free) to tell me what the following symbol is associated with in regards to post-T.G. projects and this film:
ALL PASSES ARE NOW GIVEN AWAY!
You should still go to Real Art Ways and maybe you’ll see me there!
Genesis P-Orridge has been one of the most innovative and influential figures in music and fine art for the last 30 years. A link between the pre- and post-punk eras, he is the founder of the legendary groups COUM Transmissions (1969-1976), Throbbing Gristle (1975-1981), and Psychic TV (1981 to present), all of which merged performance art with rock music. Celebrated by critics and art historians as a progenitor of “industrial music”, his innovations have transformed the character of rock and electronic music while his prodigious efforts to expand the boundaries of live performance have radically altered the way people experience sound in a concert setting.
But that’s just the preamble to the story. Defying artistic boundaries, Genesis has re-defined his art as a challenge to the limits of biology. In 2000, Genesis began a series of surgeries in order to more closely resemble his love, Lady Jaye (née Jacqueline Breyer), who remained his other half and artistic partner for nearly 15 years. It was the ultimate act of devotion, and Genesis’s most risky, ambitious, and subversive performance to date: he became a she in a triumphant act of artistic self-expression. Genesis called this project “Creating the Pandrogyne”. Influenced, like so much of Genesis work, by Brion Gysin and William Burroughs Cut Ups , it was an attempt to deconstruct two individual identities through the creation of an indivisible third.
This is a love story, and a portrait of two lives that illustrate the transformative powers of both love and art. Marie Losier brings to us the most intimate details of Genesis’s extraordinary, uncanny world. In warm and intimate images captured handheld, Losier crafts a labyrinthine mise-en-scene of interviews, home movies, and performance footage. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye documents a truly new brand of Romantic consciousness, one in defiance of the daily dehumanization of the body by the pervasive presence of advertising and pornography, conveying beauty, dignity and devotion from a perspective never before seen on film.
