In February 1976, COUM was chosen to take part in the largest ever exhibition of British art in Milan, entitled ‘Arte Inglese Oggi’. Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P-Orridge performed ‘Towards Thee Crystal Bowl’ on 24 and 25 February in the central octagon of the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele.

“The main source of funding for British artists exhibiting or performing abroad was the British Council. COUM had received grants of £52.50 for their travel to the Stadfest in Rottweil and £273.58 for the Paris Biennale. Despite these previous awards it was still a welcome shock when they were invited by the British Council to take part in the major survey show, Arte Inglese Oggi 1960-1976 (English Art Today 1960-1976) in Milan, during February and March 1976. For their services they were reported to have received £650.40.

Richard Cork described COUM’s piece, Towards Thee Crystal Bowl, for the Evening Standard (4 March 1976): “[COUM] set up a scaffolding structure in the middle of the magnificent Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele arcade. Even before they began their performance an enormous crowd had gathered in this, the heart of Milan’s public city life. While the two performers executed their restrained and remarkably balletic dialogue with each other, Cosey for the most part swimming through a ‘bath’ of polystyrene granules while Genesis moved through the scaffolding above her, the onlookers were all silent with awed concentration.”

The ‘bath’ of polystyrene granules described by Cork, was actually a hastily arranged replacement for the gallons of milk COUM had originally intended to use. Such a provocative display of lactic excess had been banned because the British Council feared that it might have been controversially linked to the difficulties the EEC was then experiencing with milk quotas. They had also planned to do the action naked. Despite these compromises the action represented the purest expression yet of COUM’s exploration of the formal characteristics of performance. “I was the shadow,” P-Orridge says, "Cosey was the lightr and we were trying the mirror each other's body position. My task was to go from the metal ‘shower’ [a cubicle surrounded by metal chains] up to the sky [the roof of the scaffolding] where I had a camera already placed to take photos straight down. Cosey’s task was to come from the sky down into the milk. All of this was done very slowly and lasted for an hour. As she gradually sank into the white I took photographs.” In this instance the relationship between the artist and audience was mediated by the framing devices of the scaffolding and the barriers that had been place around their performing area. This separation was further extenuated by COUM’s refusal of verbal exchange with the audience: the only communication being through movement or gesture.” — Source : ‘Wreckers of Civilisation: The Story of COUM Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle’, edited by Simon Ford, p.6.5 to p.6.8, Black Dog Publishing Limited, 1999.