1. Most COUM Transmissions originated in dreams. Day-dreams, sleepdreams, and sometimes spontaneous trance-like fantasies or dream extrapolations. I fervently believed Coum Transmissions actions should all ways strive to be completely arbitrary, whilst maintaining their original dream characteristic: to be an improvised primal exploration ; a self-confrontational outpouring ; an intersection of taboo ; and a spontaneous physical, emotional, and later on sexual, manifestation teetering on the very edge of instructional disintegration and absurd meaninglessness.

So it was, that my self declared policy during all Coum Transmissions actions in the years 1969-76 was to refuse to arrange any planned, formal or in any manner pre-considered documentation that could in any manner function to compromise the "source dream".My intention was to thereby engineer a unique and highly deliberated, pro-subjective, experiential exchange, integrated with an equally pro-subjective, "sight-specific", perceptual exchange, between "transmediator" and viewer.

What I really wished to do was to reach and decontrol the "object of desire", in at least this one of its many potential senses, by the tradition of gratuitous documentary diffusion.

This was primarily achieved in terms of the post-action long timeframe ; that is, in the photographic traces remaining after the event that had been created by this conscious strategy of universal inclusivity of participation in the active medium of "memory" by those we can literally label "passers-b/eye".

I imagined, that by means of this expansive application of what might easily be defined as another aspect of random chance, a certain fundamental sacrilege of the two-dimensional medium would ensue ; so powerfully charged by a raw celebration of inexpert that it would engulf, violate and evade the previous object commodification process within the existing art world and the entrenched and tyrannizing artgallery system.

This approach seemed to me, at the time, to be immediate and positive contradiction to the previous "art market" norm and it simplicit creative dilemma of concretion, coupled incestuously withits co-conspirator, formularisation. Furthermore, I wished to completely degrade and subvert at its source the innate, and appallingly inevitable, hierarchy and the self-proclaimed expertise,of opinionated and talentless critics; smug and profiteering dealers; and their self-serving participation in matters of "Art", by directly confronting and circumventing what I saw as an obsolete overemphasis on that contrived and mundane banality grossly labeled "arthistorical context"!

Any project at that time that was inclusive of organised perfect photos, predictable serial documentation and limited edition prints that were salable in and of themselves had absolutely no place in my perceptual scheme of things. Indeed, I was convinced that they would be intrusive hindrances and distractions.

The fact that Coum Transmissions consistently carried out this"threat", instead of merely emptily posturing to suit the currentmode of vacuous credibility, like most of my unseemly contemporaries,was both a discriminating conceit, and a conscious but elegantfriction, within and without the established critical mores of thatparticular epoch.

Many less authentic artists colonising the idea of 70's"Performance art" and its declared concerns with investigations of "life-as-art" and "body-as-art" made the appropriate specious loud noises ; publicly protesting that the unfolding in real time of their action or performance in and of itself was clearly for them the workin its entirety. (They still do!) Privately however, they brazenly revealed their all-pervading hypocrisy and old-fashioned "artworld"careerism. Over and over again suffering a concealed, pitiful,aesthetic anguish as they laboriously choreographed their "performances" in collaboration with highly paid art photographers inorder to give themselves the best possible photo-documentation.

Such counterfeit "art performances", "actions", "happenings" and spectacles were trumpeted with great polemic and pompousness by their perpetrators in journals and catalogues as contemporary avant-garde evolutions. Then they were validated based upon the assertion that they were ideologically divorced from, and devoid of any respect or regard for, any relationship with "art world" capitalism.

Ah yes ! this was "art" irrevocably freed at last of absolutelyany vestigial consideration whatsoever, implicit or otherwise, of commercial commodification.

Thus, then, was this transient, but fashionable, stance of self-serving denial actually seized upon quite ruthlessly as yet another shamelessly self-promoting and success oriented opportunity for the promulgation of expensive, museum directed collectibles. And with it carne a synthetic alliance of "nihilist" artists with trendy collaborating photographers, ensuring very commercial series of beautiful photo prints and graphic editions for their dealers ; cropped and stylish promotional illustrations for prestigious magazines and catalogues (later on this would grow to include seminalbooks, texts and indispensable critical appreciations).

Even formal, retrospective, gallery exhibitions of the highly prized and highly priced photos themselves as conceptually validatedartworks in themselves became an established and establishment signal of co-option that continues to this day in direct contradiction toany original, albeit fabricated, intent.

All this Astorical preamble is essential to a deeper appreciationof the unique integrity of the original sources of the pictures contained within this book; of the importance of the seminal processwhich they implicitly represent; and of the ironic retrospectivecommentary which they now invoke. This approach could perhaps bedefined most completely as a new medium of "NostalgicPrecision".

All the photographs in this book of COUM Tranmissions actions weretaken by strangers who chose for themselves what moments; whatimages; what details; even what traces remaining afterwards torecord. This they did for their own arbitrary reasons regardless ofany personal expectation by COUM as to what might have beensignificant in terms of their aesthetic progress. COUM might think aparticular image created was unique and intensely graphic later todiscover it had been ignored or overlooked by the passers-by thathappened ta take photographs.

So it was completely unknown people, who happened ta have cameraswith them by chance or by independent choice, who were the firstmeans of refusing control over what was recorded.

Then, of this already small group of people, it was only thosewho, of their own volition, happened to take the time to find out forthemselves the COUM mailing address somehow and then actually botherto expend the time, trouble and expense of actually sending theirpictures to COUM who became the second means of refusal of controlover what was recorded.

Allowing this arbitrary interaction to choose the material ofperception was, and probably still is, unique.

I think it is ex-dreamly important to constantly remember that allthe photographs contained in this book were originally sent in thepost by person or persons unknown. By the "Passer-B/eye".

Upon receipt of these occasional unsolicited reminiscences aperiod of assimilation by my SELF of the materials donated wouldensue. Often they would be pinned on the wall near my desk, and nearmy bed so that they were eventually burned into my retina and memoryby repetitious viewing and peripheral viewing until they would, oncemore, enter the content of my sleeping, waking, and other dreams.After due contemplation and familiarisation a concomitant techniqueof laborious excision of detail from the initial photographs wouldensue.

This "ex-cising" might take the form of re-photographing thereceived prints, or specific significant sections of them, in my owndarkroom in a converted kitchen within my home. It might take theform of collaging various elements, exploring telling collisions andshockingly remarkable, undreamed of, intersections.

This re-manufacturing of graphic images of "time-transfixed", of"frozen moments", I perceived as a concurrent epilogue to theoriginal action. The effect being very much like re-visiting anhallucinatory dream whilst possessed of an ability to make the verymatter of that dream malleable and re-definable.

This epilogue stage of an action in turn allowed to "fix" bothchemically in the tray, and visually in the refined content of theresultant photographic image, the distilled essence of my originalintention, or "dream", as it had become clear through thisretrospective act of illumination.

Through everything transmission and reception governed both theprivate source dreams that became actions ; the actions themselves asthey unraveled in public ; and the accumulation of the documentaryepilogue of both.

In all three of these stages I found my role far more mediumistic,therefore, than artistic or intellectual. I was clearly for more avessel for manifestation.

I had become a mediator between "dream" and a more and moredishevelled construct of consensus compromise, commonly mislabelled"reality".

2. Even if COUM action was transmitted by one biological male, indescription it might often refer to both a male aspect and a femaleaspect. As in many COUM actions this "shadow female" is alwayspresent as an equal and coumplimentary aspect ov thee transmediator.Coumtimes my SELF would literally slip back and forth between bothpersona's using costume and body language as signals ov thishermaphroditic process. Coumtimes a second transmediator, abiological female, would similtaneously explore thee "shadow female".Thee "shadow male" would becoum apparently solid when activated and,in a sense, thereby was perceived intellectually by thee viewer as aphysical "reality". In thee same way, if my SELF switched over tothee "shadow female" persona, this activation too would assume anapparent corporeality. Both are all ways present at all times. Theeaspiration or goal would be an hermaphroditic ascendancy. Thismutation would seem to be more and more clearly inevitable andabsolutely necessary as thee point ov retrospective perception ismore clearly defined and localised.

3. Dear reader: Please be aware that all stories, descriptions, and propositions contained within this book are parables and metaphors. After all, none of this could possibly be true, could it ?

4. Read, mark, earn, and in wardly divest !

GENESIS P-ORRIDGE

14th February 1997

Extract from "To be ex-dream" by Genesis P-Orridge,

published by Etude et Promotion de l'Art Contemporain, 1997.

Text reprinted with publisher's permission.

Contact (they have a wonderful mail order catalog) :

Etude & Promotion de l'Art Contemporain,

c/o Olivier Prieur & Hélène Pindel,

12 rue Igor Stravinsky,

76620 LE HAVRE / FRANCE.

Accueil Sommaire Liens

M'écrire pour me dire tout le bien que vous pensez de moi