COUM Transmissions

COUM Transmissions was a British performance art collective founded by Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti in Hull in 1969, active through the 1970s. Their work combined mail art, performance, and provocation, culminating in the 1976 Prostitution exhibition at the ICA, London — one of the most controversial exhibitions in British art history. COUM Transmissions dissolved in 1976 when P-Orridge and Tutti formed Throbbing Gristle.

Publications collected here document COUM Transmissions' practice and its reception, including catalogues, artist publications, and printed matter through which their work entered institutional and private circulation.

  • Original 1979 AA Bronson and Peggy Gale, eds., Performance by Artists, Art Metropole, Toronto. Softcover with white ground and bold black title typography, 'Performance by Artists' in large sans-serif type, editors' names below, Art Metropole imprint at foot. Interior page from 1979 Performance by Artists, Art Metropole. Black-and-white photograph of Ulay and Marina Abramovic in a durational performance, two nude figures facing each other with a clothed photographer between them in a narrow doorway.

    AA Bronson & Peggy Gale, eds. — Performance by Artists

    AA Bronson & Peggy Gale, eds. — Performance by Artists