Genesis P-Orridge are one of the Bureau's foundational Tier-I entries in this archive's post-1969 industrial / performance-art / occult cluster. Born Neil Andrew Megson on 22 February 1950 in Manchester; died 14 March 2020 New York City of chronic myelomonocytic aged 70; Bureau memorial register. The catalogue centres on five sequential working positions: founder of COUM Transmissions (1969–1976); co-founder and lead vocalist of Throbbing Gristle (1975–1981, widely credited with originating the industrial-music genre); co-founder of Psychic TV (1981 onward); co-founder of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth / TOPY (1981, left 1991); the Pandrogeny Project (2003 onward) with second wife Lady Jaye (Jacqueline Breyer, d. 2007). The Bureau files P-Orridge at Tier I for the COUM / TG founding position, the 200+ music releases credited across the catalogue, the cross-disciplinary method spanning music, performance art, visual art, writing, occultism and body modification, the influence on the entire post-1976 industrial cluster, the occult-order foundation via TOPY, and the Pandrogeny Project as one of the most significant body-modification working positions in 20th- and 21st-century art history. The Bureau uses they/them as the post-Pandrogeny pronoun preference.
P-Orridge attended Solihull School and dropped out of the University of Hull. Officially changed name from Neil Andrew Megson to Genesis P-Orridge on 5 January 1971 after using the name informally for three years; later adoption of pluralised pronouns across various phases. The post-university period shaped the catalogue's opening method: living in counter-cultural communes including The Exploding Galaxy, the Ho Ho Funhouse (a former fruit warehouse by the Hull town docks), and COUM's later London base. P-Orridge met Cosey Fanni Tutti (born Christine Carol Newby) in Hull; the long-running 1969–1979 partnership with Tutti documented across the COUM, TG and post-TG catalogues. P-Orridge renamed Newby as Cosmosis (later Cosey); in 1973 mail-artist Robin Klassnik addressed Newby in a letter as "Cosey Fanni Tutti."
COUM Transmissions (Cosmic Organicism of the Universal Molecular) was founded by P-Orridge in Hull in 1969 as a musical group; after two years all band activities were suspended and COUM re-formed as a performance art collective. The pre-TG art-collective position documented across the 1969–1976 period; at peak COUM had up to eight members. The early-period logo "COUM guarantee disappointment" established the catalogue's opening engagement with wordplay and provocation. The COUM working vein included anarchic and improvised music using broken violins, prepared pianos, guitars, bongos and talking drums; later the 1973 relocation from Hull to London (squat plus basement studio in Hackney named the Death Factory) and the 1973 participation in the Fluxshoe Fluxus retrospective.
The mid-1970s mentorship from William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin formed the catalogue's pre-TG occult-and-cut-up method. P-Orridge corresponded briefly with Burroughs, who later introduced them to Gysin; Gysin became a major influence on P-Orridge's ideas and works and was their primary tutor in magic. The 1973 Edinburgh Festival saw COUM's "Art Vandals" piece at the Richard Demarco Gallery (Marcel Duchamp-inspired) where they exhibited alongside the Viennese Actionists; the pre-TG performance-art genealogy that anticipated the COUM Prostitution 1976 working idiom.
The October 1976 ICA London Prostitution exhibition was a national scandal. The exhibition included Tutti's pornographic modelling work as art alongside used tampons, used nappies (from Mary Kelly's work), and various transgressive material; censorship restrictions imposed by the ICA so that only one image could be viewed at a time. Tory MP Nicholas Fairbairn labelled the participants "wreckers of civilisation" in the Daily Mail (19 October 1976), prompting a House of Commons discussion on the public funding of the arts. The same 1976 period saw the founding of Throbbing Gristle alongside Tutti, Chris Carter and Peter Christopherson; P-Orridge as lead vocalist and lyric-and-conceptual figure across the band widely credited with originating the industrial-music genre. The 1976 founding of Industrial Records (TG's own label) anchored the post-1976 industrial-music distribution infrastructure.
The 1981 TG split closed the catalogue's first partnership. Tutti and Carter formed Chris & Cosey; P-Orridge and Christopherson co-founded Psychic TV alongside John Balance (who later departed PTV to form Coil with Christopherson). PTV from 1988 onward came under the increasing influence of acid house, anticipating the post-1988 dance-and-electronic-music cluster reception. The same 1981 period saw the founding of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY) with John Balance, David Tibet, and members of the Process Church of the Final Judgement. TOPY was conceived as an informal occult order influenced by chaos magic, a forum facilitating discussions on occult ideas by like-minded people, understood by its founders as a successor to the late-19th-century Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) under Crowley's leadership. TOPY used Austin Osman Spare's sigilisation practices; per Gavin Baddeley TOPY was "perhaps the most influential new occult order of the 1980s." P-Orridge left the group in 1991.
The 1992 Channel 4 Dispatches documentary made allegations against P-Orridge during the Satanic ritual abuse hysteria, resulting in a police investigation. P-Orridge was later cleared and Channel 4 retracted their allegation. As a result of the incident P-Orridge left the United Kingdom for the United States and settled in New York City in 1993.
The post-1993 New York period opened the catalogue's final line-up. At 45 years old P-Orridge met Jacqueline Breyer (later Lady Jaye) in a BDSM dungeon in New York City. Jaye worked as a nurse for children with terminal illnesses during the daytime and as a dominatrix at the dungeon in the evenings. Later a couple, married 1995. January 1993 relocation to Ridgewood, Queens, New York City. P-Orridge and Jaye embarked on the Pandrogeny Project from 2003 onward: influenced by the cut-up technique that Gysin had taught P-Orridge two decades earlier, the duo underwent body modification (about $200,000 of surgical alterations including breast implants, cheek and chin implants, lip plumping, eye and nose jobs, tattooing, hormone therapy) to resemble one another, coming to identify as a single pandrogynous being named Breyer P-Orridge; the late-career multi-disciplinary position. Lady Jaye died 9 October 2007 from a heart condition; P-Orridge continued the project of body modification and adopted plural pronouns ("we", "us") in honour of Lady Jaye's memory.
The post-2003 music position under PTV3 with line-ups including Alice Genese and Markus Persson; the album Hell Is Invisible... Heaven Is Her/e (January 2006, recorded in New York with guests Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Gibby Haynes of Butthole Surfers). Following Lady Jaye's October 2007 death PTV3 cancelled their North American tour. P-Orridge participated in the 2004 TG reformation; later the 23 October 2010 first date of the European tour at London Village Underground P-Orridge announced unwillingness to continue performing with TG and returned to New York; the other three members finished the tour as X-TG; later Christopherson's November 2010 death substantively closed the active TG-cluster period. P-Orridge stopped making music in 2009 to focus on other forms of art including visual-art exhibitions, spoken-word performances, and the late-period writing-and-archival position.
Health declined from the late 2010s; later the catalogue closed across the late-2010s reception period; died 14 March 2020 New York City at age 70. P-Orridge had two daughters Caresse and Genesse with first wife Paula P-Orridge (née Paula Brooking); later-life partner Susanna (28-year-old from Granada whom P-Orridge nicknamed "Susan Atkins / Hamburger Lady") was engaged to P-Orridge at the time of death. Posthumous memoir Nonbinary (June 2021, co-written with Tim Mohr) the final literary record.