ORGAN THING: Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P-Orridge are set to give live performances in an extended programme of events to mark the radical art collective COUM Transmission
Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P-Orridge are set to give live performances in an extended programme of events to mark the radical art collective COUM Transmissions.
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The events will coincide with the COUM Transmissions retrospective being staged as part of Hull UK City of Culture 2017 from 3 February – 22 March.
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Cosey Fanni Tutti, Cabinet, London and Luke Turner and Sophie Coletta of leading independent online music and arts publication The Quietus in collaboration with Hull 2017 City of Culture have curated a programme of live and club events, panel discussions and talks, to celebrate the practice and impact of COUM Transmissions, tracing a line from the group’s conception in 1969 to their termination at the Prostitution retrospective held at the ICA in October 1976, exploring a legacy that endures today.
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The events will run alongside a six-week long exhibition at Humber Street Gallery, a brand new contemporary art space for the city showcasing the best contemporary art in the heart of the Hull’s Fruit Market cultural quarter. COUM Transmissions, curated by Cosey Fanni Tutti and Cabinet, London, will present material drawn from the archives of Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P-Orridge (held by Tate Britain) alongside new filmed interviews with some original COUM members.
The live programme will feature performances and appearances from original COUM members, as well as subsequent generations of artists they have both directly and inadvertently inspired. It will seek to reclaim Hull as an important site of cultural innovators working on the peripheries of the underground.
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Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P-Orridge will be opening proceedings with separate specially commissioned live solo performances at FRüIT, situated next door to Humber Street Gallery, on Friday 3 February.
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Cosey Fanni Tutti, talking on her return to Hull, said: “So much has changed for me and Hull since I left in 1973. I couldn’t get out quickly enough – and some who thought of me and COUM as distasteful, disruptive elements couldn’t wait for me to leave either. My own and COUM’s activities went up quite a few notches after Hull. Now I’ll be back and Hull is all ‘cultured up’, embracing COUM and recognising its influence and place in art history. I’m thrilled to be returning to my hometown to co-curate the first ever COUM exhibition… and in Humber Street Gallery, one of the former fruit warehouses that unwittingly fed me for free when I was penniless and hungry.”
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Genesis P-Orridge explains, “We left Hull in July 1973 and have never been back since. We also burned all our journals from that era too. Leaving us with very few triggers to reviewing any memories. As the COUM collective we didn’t like the term ‘perform’, it implies choosing to pretend to be… we were more happy with “actions”, something you DO, spontaneous, energised, intuitive and a coumpulsion. For us “The none creation of art is as valid as creating it”. The thought alone is often enough. So walking those streets in Hull again in 2016 was like being a ghost searching for my SELF in a distant past. The strangest and most unexpected feeling we experienced was that everywhere, every building, seemed smaller than we recall. Just like accessing memories of events as a very young child things are often seen as far more large in scale, more overwhelming; for me visiting Hull had the opposite effect. When we checked our Hull memories against the present day, we discovered that everything felt like it had shrunk. Not just a little, but by a huge amount.”
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Martin Green, CEO and Director of Hull 2017, said: ”That Hull gave birth to COUM Transmissions is one of the great untold stories and I am thrilled that Hull 2017 gives us the opportunity to tell it to the world. The COUM retrospective, which opens the brand new Humber Street Gallery and these live events, will offer a belated contemporary insight into this ground-breaking art collective, which continues to be hugely influential. As one of the early highlights of Hull 2017 it underlines how this city has been at the forefront of cutting edge ideas that challenge convention.”
DATE: Saturday 4 February FEATURING: Panel discussions featuring Cosey Fanni Tutti, Genesis P-Orridge, John Lacey, Spydeee Gasmantell, Foxtrot Echo, Luke Turner, Anne Hilde Neset, Paul Buck, Dan Fox and Ghislaine Leung Performances from John Doran and Simon Fisher Turner, Squarewaves VENUE: FRüIT, 62-63 Humber St, Hull HU1 1TU TIME: First panel 2pm PRICE: Free (ticketed)
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On Saturday 4 February FRüIT will host two panels.
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The first will provide a history and context to COUM Transmissions, and will feature a selection of original members in a discussion moderated by Luke Turner of The Quietus. The second will feature a line-up of writers and cultural commentators who will look more broadly at the influence of COUM’s methodology and practice, looking beyond their work and at how contemporary art collectives function today. Alongside these panels The Quietus editor John Doran, who spent years in Hull in the 90s working in some of the same factories as someCOUM members, will be performing a piece based on personal and collected industrial memories of the city alongside musician Simon Fisher Turner. Hull’s own contemporary improvisational collective Squarewaves will be closing the day with a live set. An afterparty on Sat 4 February will see Richard D. Clouston’s Cosey Club take up residence – venue to be announced.
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DATE: Friday 17 March
FEATURING: Cosey Fanni Tutti will be reading from her forthcoming autobiography, ART SEX MUSIC due out in April 2017 on Faber & Faber – followed by a Q&A with Lee Brackstone from Faber & Faber then joined by Andrew Wheatley of Cabinet. London.
Adelle Stripe. Reading from her new novel. VENUE: Humber Street Gallery TIME: 7pm PRICE: Free (ticketed)
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Cosey Fanni Tutti will be reading from her forthcoming autobiography, ART SEX MUSIC due out in April 2017 on Faber & Faber – followed by a Q&A with Lee Brackstone from Faber & Faber then joined by Andrew Wheatley of Cabinet. London.
DATE: Saturday 18 March
FEATURING: Carter Tutti Void, Anthony Child (Surgeon), Quietus DJs VENUE: FRüIT, 62-63 Humber St, Hull HU1 1TU TIME: Doors 7pm PRICE: £15 Full Price (£12 Concession)
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The closing events in March 2017 explore the legacy of COUM’s work in Hull, looking to the cultural landscape post-COUM and beyond. Anthony Child (aka Surgeon) will perform at FRüIT on Saturday 18 March with a specially commissioned live COUM-influenced ambient set. Carter Tutti Void, the cross-generational trio of Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter and Nik Void of Factory Floor, will headline. This will be a reconvening of a group who have provided an exhilarating, visceral antithesis to contemporary cultural and social monotone.
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DATE: Sunday 19 March FEATURING: Kiran Sande, Alex Wilson, Sophie Coletta VENUE: The Polar Bear, 229 Spring Bank, Hull HU3 TIME: Doors 3pm PRICE: Free (ticketed)
Closing proceedings at The Polar Bear on Spring Bank on Sunday 19 March will be a showcase of Hull-inspired sets from some of the city’s underground exports; cultural innovators who grew up in the area and can just about still recall a youth spent loitering on Queen’s Gardens and mainlining toxic green Spiders cocktails.
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Heading up the bill will be Kiran Sande of Blackest Ever Black, an underground record label that has been bringing sonically dark mischief to our ears since 2010, and whose mix CD-Rs ID Mud and Dream Theory in Haltemprice have touched upon Hull in more than name alone. Also appearing will be Alex Wilson, who co-runs Public Information, a label that has released a fascinating survey of electronics from the last seven decades, and who will also be presenting a paper entitled: Thee Fabulous Mutations: Film and Video in Yorkshire after COUM in Hull as part of a separate Hull 2017 event. They’ll be joined by the Quietus’Sophie Coletta, who, after spending many teenage years staring longingly down the mouth of the Humber, fled and returned to Hull’s clutches multiple times in the 2000s.
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TICKETS ON SALE NOW – FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE VISIT THE HULL 2017 WEBSITE: WWW.HULL2017.CO.UK
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For more information please visit the Hull 2017 website: www.hull2017.co.uk
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The best way to keep up to date with this and other Hull 2017 events and activities is to register at www.hull2017.co.uk/signup.
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