Filmmaker David Charles Rodrigues explores the life and work of musician and artists Genesis P-Orridge in their documentary S/He is Still Her/e.
Combining interviews conducted during the last year of the artist’s life and a trove of archival footage and materials, Rodrigues has created an fascinating account of one of music’s influential outsiders. It screens this week as part of the Revelation Perth International Film Festival.
Born Neil Andrew Megson, P-Orridge grew up in Essex and in the late 1960’s formed the artist collective COUM Transmissions whose conformational work explored sex work, occultism and serial killers. Out of this grew the industial band Throbbing Gristle featuring P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter and Peter Christopherson.
In 1981 after Throbbing Gristle broke up, P-Orridge created Psychic TV with Peter Christopherson and Alex Ferguson, and they were significantly influenced by the acid-house movement of late 1980s.
Moving the the USA in the early 1990’s P-Orridge married Lady Jaye Beyer and the two artists began collaborating together. The Pandrogeny Project saw both artists undertake body modifications to looks more like each other, their combined being dubbed Beyer P-Orridge. The couple spent over $200,000 on body modifications.
The lives of Genesis P-Orridge and Lady Jaye, and Jaye’s 2007 death, were explored in depth in Marie Losier’s documentary The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye which screened at Revelation in 2011. Now more than a decade later we return to the same subject, with a distinctly different viewpoint.
OUTinPerth chatted with director David Charles Rodrigez about making the new film.
Was Genesis P-Orridge a challenging person to make a film about?
I think the greatest challenge was this is a person who lived so many lifetimes and went through so many transformations, and a lot of it is not even believable, it’s so extraordinary, that was really the greatest challenge.
I think the other challenge, which I’m very happy to feel that we were able to succeed in is, I’ve worked with a lot of artists in the past, and especially artists that have a legacy and that have been artists for a very long time. They end up becoming their own creation, and it’s really hard for you to get to know who they truly are.
From my experience, it’s not even their own fault. They just became this being that they created themselves, so they don’t even know who they truly are.
But on the first day that I was filming with Gen, we were on a in a cab on the way to getting her portrait painted, which is a big part of the film where she was getting her torso painted by Clarity Haynes in Brooklyn.
While we’re in the car her older daughter Caresse calls her, and all of a sudden Gen becomes Dad and is grilling Caresse on her taxes and is talking to the grandkids. And I saw that and I was like, “Wow, this is this is the access point to to Neil”, to who Gen truly was.
The reality is you’re truly all of the things, right? But there was a side that wasn’t very expressed a lot in the in the media and film, in her art.
Back in 2011 we were scheduled to chat with Genesis, but it never happened. Three nights in a row we called them at a scheduled time, which was the middle of the night in Perth, but three days in a row they forgot to be home to answer the phone. Were they a difficult person to work with?
I think because I filmed the last year of Gen’s life and mortality was really present. I think Jen was a bit softer and and I didn’t see much of that side that a lot of people speak of.
Our first meeting together was I was supposed to meet with her for an hour to see if we were going to collaborate on something, and we ended up spending 12 hours together and really had a deep connection.
Gen was really into Yoruba African spirituality and I have a really strong Brazilian Umbanda spiritual practice. We mostly talked about that.
I think I was very clear on how I wanted to do this. And I think Gen really respected it because it wasn’t really about controversy or music or art. It wasn’t about the facts, it was about the messages and inspiring a new generation.
As you watch the documentary there’s quite a juxtaposition between them at the end of their life, and footage of them decades ago where they are younger, angrier and wilder. It’s really journey through an entire life.
It is so powerful. I think one thing that Gen was really masterful at doing was really reinventing the concept of time and space.
If you look at how Gen lived their life and evolved, and how the cut up theory that was taught to her by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, where you can cut up reality and rearrange it in a chaotic way and it will make sense somehow.
That’s really how Gen lived their life, and it’s something I took with me and worked with our incredible editor Dylan Petrillo. We worked together to apply that cut up theory into the narrative itself and to see what would happen and it worked quite beautifully.
In Perth the Revelation International Film Festival is a huge event in the middle of winter showing amazing films. But I’ve noticed there are returning characters among the film subjects, this is the second film about Genesis P-orridge, and we often see Andy Warhol, Timothy Leary, William Burroughs.
Do we still have people like that in the world today who are influencing so many people and and having that effect? I’m not sure if we do.
That’s a very, very good question. I don’t think we do either. It’s so pulverized right now and and there’s not a lot of room for critical thinking anymore.
I think the reason that William Burroughs and Timothy Leary and even Gen to a certain extent, but definitely more Burroghs and Leary, the reason they’re so pervasive in all of these films that you’re talking about is because they were the bridge of Eastern philosophy into the Western world.
They were really good at making it sexy and attractive and edgy and artful, and they were very good at making it part of youth culture, which then just became part of culture with time. I feel that’s the reason why they were so pervasive.
S/He is Still Her/e is showing at the Revelation Perth International Film Festival on Tuesday 8th July and Sunday 13th July.
