S/he is still her/e

The body memory of Genesis P-Orridge

Founder of the COUM Transmissions artistic collective, leader of the industrial band Throbbing Gristle and the experimental, boundary-pushing project Psychic TV, Genesis P-Orridge was an English singer-songwriter, musician, poet, performance artist, and occultist. They were also a parent, best friend, and living enigma. Through archival videos, photos and intimate conversations with those who knew them, this documentary unveils the legacy of a true iconoclast, one who shattered societal norms and redefined the boundaries of creative and corporeal expression. As someone who was able to embrace the constant change within themselves, Genesis’ existence was often too provocative for those around them. Premiered in Italy at Mix Festival Milan, September 2024.

Genesis P-Orridge is sitting on a chair, close to a window in a room full of soft daylight in New York. They pose while a painter portrays them on a big canvas tracing the image of their chest, tattooed, pierced and signed by scars. The body is what remains of memories of the story told in this long interview to Genesis, delicate and intimate. Few weeks later the are going to end their material journey on earth. Each word is pronounced in between slow and deep breathing, connected to oxygen, as it was just another step of body transmutation. This time without choice.

S/he Is Still Her/e is more than just a documentary about the art and the artist—it’s an unflinching attempt to strip everything bare, Genesis P-Orridge, the human, naked since the first frame. It’s an intimate act of truth-telling of a multiform existence, exposing the raw humanity beneath the layers of a life where public and private were perpetually mixed, confused, and sometimes misinterpreted. Capturing the essence of such a complex story is far from easy; the story winds back to the 1950s, to Neil Andrew Megson’s childhood in the suburbs of Manchester—a hypersensitive kid with a sharp mind, an affinity for solitude, and a passion for literature and poetry that set him apart from his peers. A child who first brushed against the concept of death with a clarity that would haunt him, morphing into a persistent hallucination that shaped much of Genesis’s philosophy and creative drive. The film digs into these obsessions, delving into questions about mortality, the separation of mind and body, and the idea of the body as a vessel—a temporary carrier for thoughts and ideas. Genesis muses, challenging the rigidity of identity: if you fix yourself to a single form, how can you truly discover? Who, then, is pulling the strings of your existence and creates the person you are? It’s a reflection on life, death, and the continuous act of becoming—tracing a path through a kaleidoscopic existence that refuses simple definitions.

The body is yours but isn’t sacred—it’s a shell, a medium, a playground for transformation. It’s yours, but you’re free to reshape it, tear it apart, redefine it. Change your perspective. Invent another self. That’s what they did—again and again—slipping in and out of identities like second skins. Life is never about staying one thing. And this film it’s about those shifts—tracing the lines between the public provocations and private revelations. You’ll see the outrageous acts of COUM Transmissions, where the performances were designed to disturb, confront, offend, challenge what was acceptable. Throbbing Gristle, one of the most influential bands in electronic -and not only- music history, rose from those ashes; a sonic war that gave birth to industrial music first, and then to Psychic TV—another evolution, a space where sound and machines became the vessel for all the anxieties, disillusions and contradictions of the Western society. While performance art was dismissed as obscene and subjected to judgment rather than thoughtful critique, music became the chosen medium to communicate ideas too abstract or intense for conventional expression. It served as a channel to explore the unspeakable, crafted with a sense of spiritual discipline—each sound a ritual, each rhythm a coded message that transcended the limitations of words.

The sonic exploration of Genesis’ musical projects, in precious synergy with outstanding artists/musicians, did not contemplate any kind of limit and took all the possible directions, crossing genres and practices. In this terms they left a legacy of the ultimate creative freedom where noises, blurs and discordancies were parts of the whole. A life spent into dissection of bodies, relationships, sounds, criteria, anatomizing every aspect of matter, to unveil what’s behind and beyond, to evert control and ignorance. That state caused by people who say because instead of asking why. Our enemies are because.

“They left a legacy of the ultimate creative freedom where noises, blurs and discordancies were parts of the whole.”

In the edit of the movie, a whirlwind of clips from their artistic career unfolds—a heterogeneous narrative spacing from the music scene, the aesthetics, to that relentless urge to stretch reality until it snaps. There are also intimate snapshots of their family—images of their daughters and the various homes that cradled their unconventional existence.

The extremities of their existence is depicted through the alternation of stories of domestic tranquility and controversial/violent outburst of a complex, seductive and controlling ego. The endless collision the two sides of their life seems like another Genesis’s exercise: separation between body and mind, public and private, pleasure and love, life and death, image and reality.

Then there are the frequentation with William S. Borroughs and Bryon Gysin, the inventor of the Dreamachine, which image opens and closes the film; the participation in Fluxus, the linguistic experiments, the net art, the acid tests and spiritual magic. Genesis P-Orridge lives the cult of these characters who during the 70s and 80s transform their way of thinking and living. A lifelong journey of manipulating reality and the unknown through music and practices—exploring different ways of perception to inch closer to a myriad of truths. As they say magic is the sum of my life, a life also described as an infinite flow of unpredictable events. Easy to believe.

But the encounter awaited all their life is the one with Cosmosis, transfer of positive energies between beings where separation ceases to exist. In the early years, this was embodied in Cosey and it resurfaced years later in the form of Lady Jaye. Together, they birthed the Pandrogyne, a celebration of fluid identity and unity that transcended conventional boundaries. The relationship with Lady Jaye is nothing but the maximum sublimation of the concept of love, of merging into a single identity, making body and soul inseparable. Reborn together in the form of Pandrogyne, the positive meaning of androgynous. This blending of energies was not merely a personal transformation; it was a cosmic event, a reminder that true connection defies the limits of the physical world. The story of this relationship is simple and pure, free from the expressive pressure of the years in which creation was demonstrative.

As the narrative draws to a close, it becomes clear that the ending is beautifully simple, unexpectedly romantic. Beyond the body modification and all the other mere external realities—what truly matters is the journey toward finding peace in love. A that journey reveals a deeper truth: even amid chaos and radical change, love remains the fundamental force that binds us. Everything is about love, and probably this is the only ordinary truth of it all.

“Identity is your only possession,
As a being possessed
Re-possess your SELF,
Be possessed by YOUR self,
Any SELF, every SELF you ever dreamed of,
Every SELF you were ever afraid of. GET UP!”

Genesis P-Orridge & Peter Christopherson
Genesis P-Orridge & Lady Jaye
Excerpt from Thee Psychick Bible

S/he is still her/e: The body memory of Genesis P-Orridge

Credits:

Artist: Genesis P-Orridge / @pandrogyne
Directed by: David Charles Rodrigues / @davidas
Italian Premiere: Mix Festival Milan / @mix_festival
Words: Vanessa Pinzoni / @vanessa.pnz
Editors: Marco Giuliano, Anca Macavei / @marcogiulianoph @ancamacavei

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