COUM Transmissions

COUM Transmissions was a British performance art collective active from 1969 to 1977, founded by Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti, initially in Hull and later in London. Beginning as a loose community of artists, musicians, and performers, COUM developed increasingly confrontational performances engaging with sexuality, identity, and social limits — staged actions incorporating bodily fluids, medical instruments, and explicit erotic material.

Their most notorious project, the Prostitution exhibition at the ICA London in 1976 — featuring photos from Cosey Fanni Tutti's work as a pornographic magazine model, alongside performance documentation — caused a national scandal.