RE:CIRCULATION No. 011. One book, two names: copy 161 of S/HE IS HER/E, from the James Birch Collection. First sent to subscribers of the newsletter, 7 November 2026.
GENESIS P-ORRIDGE / BREYER P-ORRIDGE, S/HE IS HER/E: Poems for Thee Majesty, Kathmandu, 2000, reworked New York, 2003. Copy 161 of 500. James Birch Collection.
Kathmandu, 2000. One of 500 copies, printed at Samjhana Press in Thamel during Bada Dashain and bound in red Nepalese paper. This is copy 161, signed “Genesis P-Orridge” on the title page. Being a copy later reworked by hand in New York: a found children’s-book illustration torn in two and pasted to the front and rear pastedowns, schoolchildren at the front and a chained, Krampus-like demon leading them away at the back, with the book’s own pages standing between the halves; an ink drawing beside the second half; rubber stamps throughout, among them “IFYOUREADTHISWEWILLHATEYOU / Endre Tót & Genesis P-Orridge”, “From the Files of Scotland Yard”, “Control Agents Only” and “It would be a mistake to think E was ever really alive”; a reproduction of Transgendered Sacred Heart, captioned “Painting by Genesis P-Orridge” and pasted to a page; a PTV3 Pandrogeny sticker; Genesis’s “Your 15 minutes just became eternity” card, laid in; and the “With Everything / Limited” blind stamp also found on the pair’s 2003 Prayers for Pandrogeny & Breaking Sex cards. SIGNED a second time to the rear pastedown, in red crayon, “Breyer P-Orridge”, and dated “NYC 2003”: “Breyer” in Lady Jaye’s hand, “P-Orridge” in Genesis’s. From the collection of James Birch, who gave the pair their first UK survey at A22 Gallery in 2003.
A self-reflexive bookwork, signed first by one name and then by two, which carries the idea at the centre of Pandrogeny: that a work, like a name, can belong to no single author.
Title page, signed “Genesis P-Orridge”. Printed at Samjhana Press, Thamel, Kathmandu.
Between the two signatures one artist has become two. Between them, too, sit three men who never appear in the book’s text: Brion Gysin, Endre Tót and James Birch. Each is present in it all the same, as a dedication, a rubber stamp and a provenance.
01 — Gysin: the method
The book is dedicated, among others, to Brion Gysin. P-Orridge met Gysin in the 1970s and took from him the cut-up: texts sliced and recombined until they belonged to neither author. Gysin and William Burroughs called the result of their collaborations “the Third Mind”.
Breyer P-Orridge said plainly where Pandrogeny came from. If two writers cut up together produce a third, they reasoned, two people might do the same with themselves. “We cut ourselves up,” Genesis later put it, to make “a third entity”.
Copy 161 is that idea in small. Its pastedowns hold a found children’s-book illustration torn in two: schoolchildren on the front, a chained, Krampus-like demon leading them away on the back. The book’s own pages are what separates the halves. The second signature does the same with a name: “Breyer” in Lady Jaye’s hand, “P-Orridge” in Genesis’s.
Front pastedown. Rubber stamps and the first half of the torn illustration.
Rear pastedown. Ink drawing, the second half, and the red crayon signature.
02 — Tót: the network
First leaf.
On the first leaf is a rubber stamp: “IFYOUREADTHISWEWILLHATEYOU / Endre Tót & Genesis P-Orridge”. Tót, the Hungarian conceptual artist, built much of his work from rubber stamps carrying short declarations. In the 1970s he and P-Orridge were correspondents in the international mail-art network, the postal circuit through which artists exchanged work outside the gallery system.
The network left another mark here. The title page is stamped “From the Files of Scotland Yard”. It recalls G.P.O. versus G.P-O, the 1976 case in which the Post Office prosecuted P-Orridge and COUM Transmissions over their mail art.
Whether the Tót stamp records a joint work or was cut by P-Orridge alone is not yet known. Either way, it carries that circuit into a book signed in New York nearly thirty years later.
03 — Birch: the destination
James Birch met Genesis in London in the early 1980s. In June 2003 he gave Genesis and Lady Jaye their first UK survey, Painful but Fabulous, at his A22 Gallery in Clerkenwell. It included new work under the name Breyer P-Orridge.
The invitation reproduced Transgendered Sacred Heart (2003): a found prayer card of the Sacred Heart, reworked with a Polaroid of a bandaged, tattooed torso holding a glass vessel of blood where the heart should be. In copy 161 the same image is pasted onto a page, captioned “Painting by Genesis P-Orridge”. It appears to be a home-printed copy rather than part of the Kathmandu printing. The same “With Everything / Limited” blind stamp marks both the book and an envelope of the pair’s 2003 Prayers for Pandrogeny & Breaking Sex cards. Each card closes with the book’s title, “S/HE IS HER/E”.
Transgendered Sacred Heart, pasted into copy 161, captioned “Painting by Genesis P-Orridge”.
“Nothing short ov a total gender.” A PTV3 Pandrogeny sticker on the page.
“Your 15 minutes just became eternity.” Genesis’s New York card, laid in.
So how did a book signed in New York reach a London dealer? In 2003 Genesis and Lady Jaye lived in Ridgewood, Queens. Was it sent through the post, like the mail art it quotes? Was it made with the A22 show in mind and left out of it, or given to Birch afterwards as thanks? The book holds no postmark or address. Birch himself may hold the answer, and we have written to ask.
Three men, one third
Gysin supplied the method, Tót the circuit, Birch the room where it was shown. None of them made this book. What they share is the idea it carries: that a work, like a name, can belong to no single author.
Rear endpaper. “Don’t Take It Too Art.”
One of the book’s stamps reads “It would be a mistake to think E was ever really alive.” The “E” stands where an “I” should be.
“Hatred is nothing.” Stamps over a poem, copyright Genesis P-Orridge 1996.
Back cover.
Copy 161 is at the archive. If it holds your attention, write to us and we’ll open an Online Viewing Room around it, or book an appointment to see it in person.
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From the James Birch Collection. Further reading: RE:CIRCULATION No. 010 · Genesis P-Orridge, Your 15 Minutes Just Became Eternity.
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