Pandrogyny - An Attitude Discussed

By Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge (Breyer P-Orridge)

Lady Jaye and WE were invited to think about “pandrogyny” and this is a rewritten precis of the ideas we proposed. Since this time, 2003, so much has happened and our ideas have evolved ( VIVA LA EVOLUTION ) but there is, nevertheless a kernel of our truth we feel is worth sharing with you all.

It seems useful to us, in our practice, to adopt the assumption that there is no way of knowing which has supremacy, the recording device that is DNA, or the self we converse with internally that we call consciousness but often, rather lazily, still imagine and identify as the living, biological, body. In fact, we see the “I” of our consciousness as a fictional assembly or collage that resides in the environment of the body. 

One of the central themes of our work is the malleability of physical and behavioural identity. The body is used by the mind as a logo, an hieroglyph for the SELF before we are able to speak and use language. It is almost an holographic doll constructed by external expectations even before our body is born. Even the name we are assigned is another holographic programme in the prophetic story of who we are to become. 

Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs from
The Third Mind via eyeswithwings.net

The work of William S Burroughs and Brion Gysin has been highly influential to us, particularly in relation to the practice of the “cut-up”. To liberate the word from linearity, they began to cut-up and, incorporating random chance, re-assembled both their own and co-opted literature “…to see what it really says…” They referred to the phenomena of profound and poetic new collisions and meanings that resulted from their intimate collaborations as the “Third Mind”. This was produced with a willingness to sacrifice their own separate, previously inviolate works and artistic “ownership”. In many ways they saw the third mind as an entity in and of itself. Something “other”, closer to a purity of essence, and the origin and source of a magical or divine creativity that could only result from the unconditional integration of two sources.

Beginning in the 1960s, especially from being an active participant in the Exploding Galaxy/Transmedia Exploration and occasionally the Gay Lib street theatre, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge experimented with various disciplines and practices to apply the cut-up to behaviour, to identity, and to gender; de-conditioning as far as possible the fictional character written by consensus reality and all who would impose their expectations upon him. Breyer P-Orridge worked throughout the 1970s as a performance artist and actionist; and during the 1980s s/he studied and practiced ritual and shamanic techniques and was deeply involved in the body modification movement known as “modern primitives”. In the early 1990s Genesis Breyer P-Orridge met Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge and their ever more rigorous collaborations began.

Just as Burroughs and Gysin collaborated together, subsuming their separate works, individuality and ego to a collaborative process by cutting-up the Word to produce a third mind, so, in our current practice, Breyer P-Orridge have applied the cut-up system and third mind concept directly to a central concern, the fictional self. The un-authorised story of our lives so far.

Breyer P-Orridge both supply our separate bodies, individuality and ego to an ongoing and substantially irreversible process of cutting-up identity to produce a third being, an “other” entity that we call the Pandrogyne. In our quest to create the Pandrogyne, both Genesis and Lady Jaye have agreed to use various modern medical techniques to try and look as much like each other as possible. We are required, over and over again by our process of literally cutting-up our bodies, to create a third, conceptually more precise body, to let go of a lifetime’s attachment to the physical logo that we visualise automatically as “I” in our internal dialogue with the SELF. We encounter many unexpected internal conflicts as our egos try to survive intact as the “person” they have been previously conditioned to be. We have discovered that how we look does relate very directly to the internal dialogue that describes us to our SELF and to each other. It is not superficial in its effect when it is instructed that everything about it’s logo of its SELF is malleable, vulnerable and impermanent.

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: English Breakfast

When you consider transexuality, cross-dressing, cosmetic surgery, piercing and tattooing, they are all calculated impulses—a symptomatic groping toward the next phase. One of the great things about human beings is that they impulsively and intuitively express what is inevitably next in the evolution of culture and our species. It is the Other that we are destined to become. Pandrogyny is not about defining differences but about creating similarities. Not about separation but about unification and resolution.

Breyer P-Orridge believe that the binary systems embedded in society, culture and biology are the root cause of conflict, and aggression which in turn justify and maintain oppressive control systems and divisive hierarchies. Dualistic societies have become so fundamentally inert, uncontrollably consuming and self-perpetuating that they threaten the continued existence of our species and the pragmatic beauty of infinite diversity of expression. In this context the journey represented by their pandrogyny and the experimental creation of a third form of gender- neutral living being is concerned with nothing less than strategies dedicated to the survival of the species. “WE ARE BUT ONE…” becomes less about individual gnosis and more about the unfolding of an entirely new, open-source, 21st century myth of creation.

PRAYERS for SACRED HEARTS

There is no reason

on earth why

you should run out

of people to be.

S/HE IS HER/E

P-ANDROGENY

POSITIVE ANDROGENY

POWER ANDROGENY

POTENT ANDROGENY

POLITICAL ANDROGENY

PERFECT ANDROGENY

PRECIOUS ANDROGENY

P-ANDROGYNE

WILD

BEING

UNHOLY

CHOSEN ONE

To throw off the shackles

Of experience

Of true sexual freedom

And physical love!

End gender.

BREAK SEX.

There are more than one of you.

Maybe hundreds to chose from.

CHANGE THE WAY TO PERCEIVE

AND CHANGE ALL MEMORY.

from www.genesisbreyerporridge.com/