The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye

Back in the late 1970s the band Throbbing Gristle was described by a British MP as “wreckers of civilization.” Its founder Genesis P-Orridge is radical, innovative and intellectually uncompromising to this day. The film by American director Marie Losier also tells his life story as defined by his shared “polysexual experiment.” Genesis and his wife decided to undergo a series of operations in an endeavour to bring their bodies physically closer to one another, with the ultimate aim of entering a hermaphroditic state together (i.e. Genesis now has breasts). Genesis’s wife, however, died after one of her several operations. The director’s debut attracted a good deal of attention both in the film environment and on the contemporary art scene. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)