Wreckers of Civilisation : The Story of Coum Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle

Simon Ford ; Genesis P-Orridge ; Cosey Fanni Tutti ; Chris Carter ; Peter Christopherson

ISBN 10: 1901033600 / ISBN 13: 9781901033601

Published by Black Dog, London, 1999

About this Item

Comprehensive history of the performance art group COUM Transmissions and the industrial music pioneers Throbbing Gristle. This copy signed by author and has small card invite to book launch at Salon 3 in the Elephant & Castle shopping centre loosely inserted. Slight shelf wear to edges, light corner crease to front free endpaper, small stain to fore-edge, previous owner's signature, couple of reading creases to spine. Photographs available on request. All books dispatched same or next working day in robust packaging.

Seller Inventory # 015949

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Wreckers of Civilisation : The Story of Coum Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle
• Publisher: Black Dog, London
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1901033600
• ISBN 13: 9781901033601
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Counterculture
  • Music
  • Occult

About this title

Synopsis

"These people are the wreckers of civilisation", exclaimed the conservative Member of Parliment Nicholas Fairbairn in 1976. His outburst was meant to describe four artists and musicians - Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fani Tutti, Peter Christopherson and Chris Carter. What "these people" had done to deserve such an epithet, and what they were about to do, is the subject of this book. From the forword by Jon Savage: Wreckers of Civilisation recalls a time which despite volumes of print remains occluded, obdurate, even intimidating: that moment before the conservative reconstruction. To be awake in London in the late 1970s was to be plunged into turmoil: externally manifest in riot, internally within various forms of damage and depression and, if one felt brave or driven, extreme aesthetics. COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle mark the furthest reach of that impulse: even more so than Punk, they plunged into a technological and personal examination of the dark side - the forbidden, the taboo, the dystopian future on the doorstep. Today this might seem like science fiction or deliberate shock tactics, but then it seemed like reportage, front line dispatches from a convulsed country.

About the Author

Simon Ford is a freelance writer and art historian. He was previously Research Associate in Craft and Design and Curator of the Design Council Slide Collection at Manchester Metropolitan University, as well as being a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He received his PhD in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2000. He is the author of Wreckers of Civilisation: The Story of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle (1999, 2017, Black Dog Publishing) and Hip Priest: The Story of Mark E. Smith and The Fall (2003, Quartet). His most recent book is The Situationist International: A User's Guide (2006, Black Dog).