A contact sheet documenting the ‘Cease to Exist No.5’ action at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Arts (LAICA), November 1976.

COUM Transmissions. 

£600

“1). Genesis stands holding a bottle of half-milk half piss. He drinks it as fast as he can without breathing, if it runs through his clothes does not matter. He tries hard to keep all his muscles so tense that they hurt.

2). Cosey begins naked. She has open wounds on her breasts. She also has a raw slash from her fanny to her navel. It is coagulating, about an hour old. She takes a needle & thread and sews up her breast cuts very neatly, just as if she is sewing a pair of trousers.

3). Small pools of blood collect on thee floor amongst thee yellow polenta shadows of arrows. Cosey takes a syringe and pushes thee needle into her sewn breast, filling it with blood. She injects thee blood slowly into thee top of thee cut from her fanny to her navel. It runs through thee cut into her cunt and onto thee floor. She sticks a second hypodermic right into her cunt filling it with a mixture of blood and milk.

4). Genesis removes his blood and milk soaked clothes. Under them he wears a saran-wrap jock strap over his testicle area. He takes a hypodermic syringe and stabs it into a testicle, fills it with blood, picks a black egg off thee floor, stabs thee syringe into it, empties thee syringe.

5). Cosey takes a rusty razor blade and cuts a rectangle into thee skin of her forearm.Carefully slicing under one edge she lifts up thee flap of skin and places a passport photograph of Genesis under thee flap, licking off excess blood.

6). Genesis takes another syringe of blood from his testicles and injects it back into his forearm. He does this repeatedly, also injecting a total of seven black eggs with his own blood. He is stood on a square of sharp black nails and ice.

7). Cosey opens thee lips of her cunt wide and pushes in her fingers, masturbating.

8). Genesis fills a spinal syringe with milk, another with blood. He takes each in turn and injects all their contents in turn up his anus. He pisses into a large glass. As he squeezes out thee last drop he farts and blood mingled with milk shoots out of his arse.

9). Cosey slithers through all thee liquid towards him, lapping it up, rubbing it into her cunt.

10). They meet in a pool of vomit and join together cunt to cock, legs entwined, on thee wet floor.” – ‘Egozine Vol.2 No.2. International Edition’, [p.16], edited by Robert J. Lambert, [1976].

London: COUM Transmissions, Nd. (20.1 × 25.4 cm). Gelatin silver print. Signed by P-Orridge and dedicated to Jean Sellem, with the inscription ʻdear Jean, This sheet of contacts you can keep. Gen’. COUM Transmissions stamp affixed to the back of the photograph. Number of prints unknown. Rare. Condition: Good. Two tears and slight fraying of the paper at the edges. Item ID: 8259.

Subjects:Performance Art,Art,20th Century

Format:Photographs

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