PTV3 / Pandrogyny

I didn’t really take any notice of Genesis P Orridge when he was an urban terrorist encouraging the youth to challenge the system and create their own way of living. I only got interested when he had breast implants and started spouting amazing philosophies about gender.

I went to see Psychic TV at The Forum two years ago purely for the spectacle of Genesis. I’d seen intriguing pictures of him post-surgery with his long blonde hair and collagen lips. When Justin told me he’d seen him perform in New York wearing big rings on his fingers that spelled C-U-N-T and B-I-T-C-H, I knew he was my kinda gal.

This Saturday he was back for a PVT3 performance at Astoria. The band came on stage all wearing blonde hair or blonde wigs and rattled through an impressive two hour set. I can’t say much about the music, as it was nearly all new to me – it started of psychedelic, then went a bit rocky with some dirgy bits, will that do?

The band was flanked by a huge collection of video screens that showed film clips throughout. A lot of these were of Genesis having surgery – having his lips injected or having some weird graft on his eye. I didn’t focus on them too long, in fact if you looked around you’d see a lot of people gazing at their feet – there’s a lot of squeamish ex-goths around.

My favourite clip was him and his wife, Lady Jaye, walking around in fur and finery with bandages over their faces like plastic surgery patients, but with flawless make-up and false eyelashes underneath.

Genesis’ appearance transcends transgender or drag, he’s a human art project. The basis of his look is to try and resemble Lady Jaye as much as possible. The two cemented their relationship years ago by having matching breast implants on Valentine’s Day.

Genesis calls the project Pandrogeny or Breaking Sex. Pandrogeny is a state of positive androgyny – “an alchemical state where all physical and mental boundaries are dis-solved to awaken our remembrance of what we were before the beginning of time.”

He’s not interested in changing gender per-se, but in reclaiming an identity and creating a self. His notes and essays on the subject are weighty and written in a language of his own, making some of his points challenging to decipher. A lot of his ideologies remind me a Gender Outlaw, a fantastic book by Kate Bornstein that I’m re-reading after catching up with her on MySpace.

Kate is an MTF transsexual, but her book goes beyond the transsexual experience and dissects the whole issue of gender and why your physical being shouldn’t determine your views or actions. It discusses how difficult it is to be seen or to regard yourself as “other” in a world that only acknowledges male or female.

Genesis is keen on the concept of surgery and how it can be used to create a physical being that expresses all that you contain within. Personally I’m not keen on the surgery aspect, it strikes me it would be a lot healthier to live happily inside the body you have and express yourself and dress in the manner you choose, regardless of the stereotype of your gender. It’s all just drag, after all.

But I’m glad that he exists and still has the energy and drive to keep working. The world needs more genius nutters.