COUM Transmissions

COUM Transmissions was a performance art group directed by Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P-Orridge. It existed formally from 1969 until 1976. Members over its existence included Foxtrot Echo, Fizzey Peet, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson and Chris Carter.

COUM's work took on different directions and lives of its own. Examples include Cosey's pornographic modelling career and, most notably, the industrial music group Throbbing Gristle.

The last official COUM performances and art shows took place in 1976. At or around that time, Genesis proclaimed he was through with performance art. Cosey, on the other hand, felt she had only just begun. Though she feels the name COUM to be "tainted" now and unusable, she has been known to say her individual projects are still a part of the COUM family of work.

A definitive documentary work on COUM Transmissions is the book Wreckers of Civilization by Simon Ford, curator of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Black Dog Publishing Company, July 2000.