THE POST PUNKS
Throbbing Gristle/ Genesis P. Orridge
With TG, we see performance ideas stretching past the boundaries of the music venue and spilling into daily life. Participatory public performance becomes a way by which the mind and body sharpen discipline and resist mechanization – the goal being mastery of self, or growth of soul-power. Constant transmutation/transformation is seen as a duty of creativity in a ‘process reality’. Here, the principles found in ancient esoterica become more than a fascination and become tools of inner and outer discovery – THEE PSYCHICK BIBLE
TG performing Persuasion/Discipline:
Devo
Devo showed us that the performance of subversive music in corporate and highly coded places of culture (malls, banks, public elevators, etc) can be an effective means of resistance. Devo seems simpatico in spirit to the work of the Situationists in many ways. Both were looking for means of counteracting the spectacle of late capitalism through “the construction of situations, moments of life deliberately constructed for the purpose of reawakening and pursuing authentic desires, experiencing the feeling of life and adventure, and the liberation of everyday life”(from the Situationist International Wikipedia Page).
Both their live theater (particularly in the1980s) and the still current experience of having ‘Freedom of Choice’ blasting at the supermarket are performative acts capable of shaking us out of slumber to view our ever devolving Western Idiocracy in brief moments of sharp clarity. This laughter is pain leaving the body.
Devo live at the Phoenix Theater:
