Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge, 1969 - 2007
Last week, artist and musician Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge died of heart failure in her Brooklyn home. Jaye was married to legendary musician Genesis P-Orridge (of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV) and she collaborated with him on music and art projects. The most notable of their work together was on a being known as Breyer P-Orridge.
Breyer P-Orridge was an entity that existed when Jaye and Genesis were together, a result of the closeness of not only their relationship, but their collaboration in creativity together. On the most basic level, the couple understood and were commenting on what is understood by many couples, regardless of the terms of the relationship — there is one, there is the other, and there is both. Breyer P-Orridge was both.
Jaye and Genesis would create installations surrounding the existence of Breyer P-Orridge — most recently, as part of “The Believers,” at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The rooms contained various photo portraits and personal items that, when grouped together, was as close a representation of their life together as could be fashioned without Breyer’s physical presence.
I had the opportunity to speak with Lady Jaye on April 26, 2007, less than six months before her death. She was extremely friendly and charming, eager to speak about her work, a true pleasure to meet. This is the interview that follows. The accompanying interview with Genesis can be found here.
Me: What was the process of conceiving of Breyer as a work?
Jaye: In the past, Djin and I had worked on projects separately, but we were always bouncing ideas off of each other. We came to understand that there was so much of the other person in our work that they were becoming collaborations rather than separate projects. We decided – inspired by this idea of the third mind – which was a concept of Brion Gysen and William S. Burroughs, who also operated in that way, the two separate entities create a third mind, which is superior to the both by combining their ideas which support one another. The premise is always the same, but the two different personalities have slightly different points of view, which are useful in developing an idea further.
We decided to start the Breyer P-Orridge project. We view Breyer P-Orridge as a separate person who is both of us. Neither of us take credit for the work, the work is a melding of both of our ideas which we would not have had singly.
Me: Everyone knows that Djinn had breast implants — you can’t miss it — but it’s more important that you both did.
Jaye: They were matching,. We got them on Valentines Day years ago, it was very romantic. It was really the start of the project, Djin had not made any major moves to looking more feminine or androgynous aside from solely cosmetic ones, make-up and styling. We both got implants the same time, the same size, but later one, because our bodies are shaped differently — Genesis has broader shoulders and was heavier at the time, so he had larger implants put in, so proportionately she would look more like me. Since that’s happened, Djin’s lost a lot of weight, so now I’m the curvy one and maintain the firmness that I had in my teens. I don’t look that much different, it’s kind of funny. Not even my own mother has noticed the changes, they’re subtle.
Me: What were the more subtle changes that were made?
Jaye: My nose was made to look somewhat more like Djin’s. My chin was made to look more like Djin’s. Djin had cheek implants that resemble mine. There’s only so much that can be done in that way. We made a decision not to try to go after a conventional idea of beauty. We both could have changed our faces to look like some kind of ideal, but we wanted to look like each other, that was the idea. We didn’t want to look pretty according to someone else’s standard or anything like that.
Me: Breyer is like a collaboration with your cosmetic surgeon, as well.
Jaye: He understands exactly what we’re trying to do and he understands that we don’t want to look like some popular movie star, we don’t want to look artificial, we want to look like each other. Rather than taking one of us and turning it into a carbon copy of the other person, we’re trying to meet in the middle, but there’s only so much that can be done.
Me: Do you have an ultimate goal with the process?
Jaye: The process is what we’re interested in rather than any sort of goal. There’s a saying “The process is the product.”
Me: So you’ll keep doing it until, in some form, you don’t?
Jaye: Conceptually, we’re always working on it. Surgically, there are limitations, there’s only so far we can go. It also depends on resources. Surgery is expensive and we don’t want to compromise our health in any kind of a major way. Also, the physical, it’s gestural, we’re never going to look exactly like one another and that’s fine, but we wanted to make an effort and we wanted to commit ourselves to the project by actually putting our bodies on the line. We figured there was no greater sacrifice.
Me: Would you ever go so far as matching genitals with each other?
Jaye: That’s not the point. Androgyny is more looking at things with an absence of gender but not an absence of sexuality. Gender is really obsolete, our society is very different now from the time when these gender roles were established — and they’ve been changing slowly over the years. However, we’re living in a technological society with rules that were established in an agricultural society and it’s simply time for a change.
Me: Online, there are plenty of ordinary people who gender bend.
Jaye: That’s interesting to me too. There might be some older male pretending to be a teenage girl and getting someone very excited. You have to wonder what it really is that excites someone sexually or interests someone sexually. Is it really the mind or is it the body?
Me: Djin was well-known for body modification – this seems to be really an extension of that.
Jaye: It is. There’s certainly an element of reclaiming the body in it. I would really prefer us to not have to lose anything. If I could have a penis attached, I would do it tomorrow, but for Djin to lose any part of the body that could give pleasure, that’s not the idea.
Me: Cosmetic penises seem cumbersome, anyhow.
Jaye: They seem to be symbolic at this point. I’m sure in the future, technology will become more sophisticated and offer more options, but really, it’s not all about the genitals, it’s a way of perceiving the world, so that gender becomes less important and roles become less fluid.
Me: This seems like the exact opposite of being a transvestite, where the traditional idea is of a person of the opposite sex playing a gender role rather than melding them.
Jaye: Yes and no. You can be playing a role, which is great if that role is liberating, if it makes them feel more comfortable in their own skin, I think that’s fantastic, I think that’s what everyone should do. They should let their personality and their lifestyle reflect how they feel inside. There’s a lot of internal conflict that happens when people are forced into roles that are really not reflecting t heir inner feelings. I don’t want to get all new age, but it doesn’t really reflect their spirit. People get sick in all sorts of ways, they’re angry and conflicted.
When I was young, I would hear stories where some guy would go to the store for a pack of cigarettes and never come back, leave his whole family behind. I used to say ‘That’s terrible! How could anyone ever do that?’ and I think it’s a terrible thing to do, but it made me think about the cages people build for themselves based on what they are told is right. They try to fit that mold and there is not a one size fits all mold when it comes to human nature. I think if people would make better initial choices, they could save themselves a lot of suffering and the suffering of others, as well.
Me: How do you translate the performance component of Breyer into an installation in a room, containing all your work?
Jaye: I think it makes more sense if you know the story behind it. Sometimes it’s a little bit tricky, because when your art is also part of how you live your life, how do you capture that materially, how do you capture that visually? It’s challenging. A lot of it is largely symbolic, though I guess all art is symbolic. We just try to use whatever resources are available to us at the time. For example, the wolf sculptures, we had those wolves around for a very long time, we didn’t hang them on the wall but they were special to us. We came to realize why they were so special – because of what they represented – they represented the power and chaos of nature and also, as an extension of that, controlling nature. The thing is, you can’t really control it in any kind of a way that’s going to be lasting and going to be harmonious.
If you asked Djin that question, Djin would answer differently. We hold varying views and we have varying motivations, but, for me, those wolves represented the self, the self outside of its cage.
Me: The room is loaded with religious imagery.
Jaye: I went to Catholic school, so I was surrounded by all that religious iconography. I’ve always been attracted to it. The Christ figure is a symbol of rebirth — the icon and the symbol in general. I don’t really like to tell people how to interpret my art, I don’t really like to tell people how to interpret art at all.
Me: The androgynous sacred heart photo is particularly fetching.
Jaye: I took a picture of Djin. Djin is messianic and has always seen it as her responsibility to try to change the world, try to make the world see things differently. I guess all artists have that suit to some degree, but Djin is very serious about it. Not that we thought that, by no means did we think about presenting Djin as a religious figure or a Christ figure, but it just happened when I took that picture of Djin post surgically just to document the experience, I said “Wow! That little blood receptacle, that really looks like a sacred heart!” The sizes were right when we lined it up. I had a picture of Christ’s Sacred Heart and when I put it next to the surgical photo, they just fit. It was something that just happened, it came ot us, we didn’t have to slave away to put it together.
Me: There’s a big absurdity to the Christian myth of humans supposedly being created in their creator’s image — the creatures having two sexes but only representing their god in one.
Jaye: If history had worked out a little bit differently, if that Christ image were recognized as an image of God, in a pre Christian world, if someone had looked at that photo, it would make perfect sense — melding of god and goddess, hermaphroditic god, of course, naturally. There are Indian gods that are hermaphroditic, its a tradition.
We’re really inspired by a story that was about the garden of Eden. We heard it was on original story of the Garden of Eden, before it was changed, where Adam and Eve were both hermaphrodites. Organized religion is all about control, so the story has been changed many times to suit the needs of whoever has benefited the most. Once this is recognized and brought to light, there are so many people in the world following these religions which are really obselete, they are tools created by someone to fit someone’s needs in the times and the times have changed.
If you wanted to look at religion as something other than what it is today and really bring it back to something of the spirit, it should be updated to serve the needs of the people in the technological world, not in the prehistoric world. Even summer vacation — we’re not working in the field anymore but children are off school all summer long. There are all these rules of property that are very smacking of old ways. A lot of them just don’t make any sense.
Me: What are your reasons for examining these issues publicly through such a personal lens?
Jaye: I would love to see a dialogue opened to it. I don’t have all the answers — at best, I’d love to simulate a discussion.
Me: Looking at any particular photo, it’s hard to tell whether you are posing for it or Djinn or if it is some photo manipulation amalgamation of the two of you — which is, of course, the point.
Jaye: Both of us are in all of our art. That third being, Breyer P-Orridge, is always present. Anything other than that, don’t even think about it.
Lady Jaye died October 9, 2007. She was 38.
Links
Pitchfork Media news item
Psychic TV’s announcement
MySpace Memorial Page for Lady Jaye
October 16th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
[…] of the interest in this article, I have published my complete interview with Jaye on my other blog here — I hope it will be of interest and comfort to her friends and […]