Counter-Cultural Icon Genesis P-Orridge Passes Away, Aged 70

On Saturday morning, Genesis P-Orridge sadly passed away following a two-year battle with leukemia, just weeks after celebrating their 70th birthday. The industrial music figurehead and performance art provocateur rose to prominence in the 1970s with controversial band Throbbing Gristle, while making waves with anti-establishment art collective COUM Transmissions alongside Cosey Fanni Tutti. In the 1980s, P-Orridge went on to form experimental acid house band Psychic TV under the magic order of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth. Broaching headline-grabbing subjects such as sex work, pornography, serial killers, and occultism in their work, P-Orridge’s artistic career and personal ventures were dedicated to challenging the status quo. P-Orridge, who used the s/he pronoun, fell in love with Lady Jayne in the 1990s, together taking on the Pandrogeny Project, which saw the pair undergo body modification to resemble one another with the aim of forming a single being ‘pandrogyne’. Revered across the worlds of art, music and fashion, P-Orridge trailblazed a countercultural message that championed individuality – s/he one said, “I am at war with the status quo of society and I am at war with those in control and power.”