Peter Christopherson
Birth : 1955-02-27, Leeds, England, UK
Death : 2010-11-24
Hull, England, 1970. In a run-down commune in a tough port city, a group of social misfits - mostly working class, mostly self-educated - adopted new identities and began making simple street theater under the name COUM Transmissions. Their playful performances gradually gave way to work that dealt openly with sex, pornography, and violence. COUM lived on the edges of society, surviving on meager resources, finding fellowship with others marginalized by the mainstream. At the core of the group were two artists, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti. As their work evolved, Cosey embarked on a career modeling for pornographic magazines, which she claimed for herself as a conceptual artwork, using it to forge a specific position in relationship to 1970s feminism. In performances, Genesis pushed himself to extremes, testing the limits of the human body.
Music
16 DVD boxset by Threshold House, containing video registrations of the following Coil performances: Air Gallery, London, 24-08-1983 SONAR, Barcelona, 17-06-2000 Convergence, New York, 18-08-2001 DK Gorbunova, Moscow, 15-09-2001 Teatro Delle Celebraziani, Bologna, 06-04-2002 New Forms, Den Haag, 07-06-2002 Vagonka, Konigsberg, 29-09-2002 Ydrogeios, Thessaloniki, 05-10-2002 Flex, Vienna (+ Prague), 29-10-2002 La Loco, Paris, 23-05-2004 Mutek, Montreal, 29-05-2003 Melkweg, Amsterdam, 03-06-2004 (Selvagina), Jesi, 11-06-2004 City Hall, Dublin, 23-10-2004 The Coil Reconstruction Kit (2 discs)
Himself
16 DVD boxset by Threshold House, containing video registrations of the following Coil performances: Air Gallery, London, 24-08-1983 SONAR, Barcelona, 17-06-2000 Convergence, New York, 18-08-2001 DK Gorbunova, Moscow, 15-09-2001 Teatro Delle Celebraziani, Bologna, 06-04-2002 New Forms, Den Haag, 07-06-2002 Vagonka, Konigsberg, 29-09-2002 Ydrogeios, Thessaloniki, 05-10-2002 Flex, Vienna (+ Prague), 29-10-2002 La Loco, Paris, 23-05-2004 Mutek, Montreal, 29-05-2003 Melkweg, Amsterdam, 03-06-2004 (Selvagina), Jesi, 11-06-2004 City Hall, Dublin, 23-10-2004 The Coil Reconstruction Kit (2 discs)
Twenty something trust fund kid Anthony Patch and his party girl wife Gloria Gilbert are disinherited by their wealthy benefactor grandfather and their lives spiral out of control in a blizzard of drugs, sex and eventual violence. Based on the novel by F.Scott Fitzgerald.
Still Photographer
Documentation of ritual performance by Black Sun Productions featuring Jhonn Balance of Coil. Montage of Polaroid photos by Peter Christopherson taken at The North Tower, Weston-super-Mare on August 23, 2002 during "Plastic Spider Thing 11". Edited in 2008, USA.
Director
Coil music video
Music
Documentary footage of Thailand shot by Sleazy with music by Sleazy.
Director
Documentary footage of Thailand shot by Sleazy with music by Sleazy.
Music
Coil's very final live appearance at the 2004 Dublin Electronic Arts Festival held in the Dublin City Hall.
Himself
Coil's very final live appearance at the 2004 Dublin Electronic Arts Festival held in the Dublin City Hall.
Animation
Animations of Peter Christopherson accompanying the album ANS, released in 2004 by Threshold House.
Himself
Live in Paris
Music
Live in Paris
Music
A professionally filmed and edited video of Coil's performance at DK Gorbunova in Moscow, Russia on September 15, 2001. This release was given to attendees at Coil's return to Moscow on September 26, 2002, and was also made available for sale. Setlist Something/Higher Beings Command Amethyst Deceivers 6:10 What Kind Of Animal Are You? 8:30 Blood From The Air 6:20 The Green Child 7:30 Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil 15:30
Himself
A professionally filmed and edited video of Coil's performance at DK Gorbunova in Moscow, Russia on September 15, 2001. This release was given to attendees at Coil's return to Moscow on September 26, 2002, and was also made available for sale. Setlist Something/Higher Beings Command Amethyst Deceivers 6:10 What Kind Of Animal Are You? 8:30 Blood From The Air 6:20 The Green Child 7:30 Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil 15:30
Himself
Coil Live Prague 2002
Music
Coil Live Prague 2002
Director
Live music and interviews with Filter records in Dublin, Ireland, and San Francisco. Songs Included are: Welcome to the Fold, One, Hey Man Nice Shot, Stuck in Here (Live - Dublin, Ireland), Dose, Under (Live - Dublin, Ireland), White Like That (Live - Dublin, Ireland and San Francisco, CA), Stuck in Here, Jurrassitol, Hey Man Nice Shot (live).
Director
In 1992, Nine Inch Nails released the "Broken" EP. It was followed in 1993 by a short film, roughly 20 minutes in length, known as the "Broken Movie". The movie wove Broken's four music videos together via a violent "snuff film" and included its own video for the song "Gave Up" as its conclusion. Due to its extreme graphic content, the Broken Movie was never officially released. But in christmas 2006, Nin secretly released it on bittorrent along with the free 2 dvd set closure deluxe prototype.
Still Photographer
Instructional documentary produced in association with the Terrence Higgins Trust.
Music
Instructional documentary produced in association with the Terrence Higgins Trust.
Director
Collection of music videos by Jimmy Somerville, both as solo artist as well as with the bands Bronski Beat and The Communards.
Himself
This documentary shows the mindset of the some of the most original and influential artists of the experimental scene (Coil, Current 93, Foetus, Test Dept.). An unprecedented insight into the workings, the methods and the ideas that made these names legendary. Filmed in Hamburg, Amsterdam and London, 1985-1987.
Director
Matt Johnson's full-length VHS video album made to accompany the 1987 release of "Infected".
Writer
A spoiled pop star crashes his car in an irrigation ditch and comes to in a public indoor pool supervised by a mysterious man who attempts to show him the error of his ways.
Original Music Composer
The Angelic Conversation is a lyrical, haunting film about a young man’s search for love, in a dreamlike landscape. Offscreen, Dame Judi Dench recites a sequence of Shakespeare sonnets, that counterpoint the action. Jarman called it, “My most austere work, but also the closest to my heart.”
Sound Editor
The Angelic Conversation is a lyrical, haunting film about a young man’s search for love, in a dreamlike landscape. Offscreen, Dame Judi Dench recites a sequence of Shakespeare sonnets, that counterpoint the action. Jarman called it, “My most austere work, but also the closest to my heart.”
Writer
Anthology music film starring Japanese singer-songwriter Yumi Matsutoya. It takes place on a train intercut with a series of flashbacks or daydreams which serve as long-form music videos.
Director of Photography
Anthology music film starring Japanese singer-songwriter Yumi Matsutoya. It takes place on a train intercut with a series of flashbacks or daydreams which serve as long-form music videos.
Director of Photography
Recorded at the Barrowlands in Glasgow New Year’s Eve 1983/4
Derek Jarman's film portrait of American writer William S. Burroughs was shot in September 1982 during his first visit to England to attend the legendary Final Academy events at the South London Ritzy Cinema. These were Burroughs-themed art and performance nights curated by Psychic TV. Jarman’s film shows Burroughs on Tottenham Court Road signing autographs with fans and inside a shop buying alcohol. The industrial soundtrack by Psychic TV features a sample of Burroughs repeating "boys, school showers and swimming pools full of 'em'". Additional footage shot by Jarman during Burroughs' visit is reported to have been confiscated by Scotland Yard in 1991 and remains lost. Jarman and Psychic TV would continue to collaborate (“magic bound us together” Jarman wrote), with Jarman directing the music video for Catalan and staring as the spokesperson in the Psychic TV video A Spokesman for the Temple of Psychick Youth.
Throbbing Gristle performing live at the Kezar Pavillion in San Francisco, California on the evening of May 29th, 1981. This would be TG's last show until reforming in 2002.
For over 30 years, the so-called First Transmission video from Psychic TV, has been the stuff of, well, “snuff film” legend. First advertised in the back pages of Thee Grey Book , The First Transmission was an ultra weird touchstone of the underground VHS tape trading scene of the 1980s.
Sound
An experimental film of the group Throbbing Gristle in concert.
An experimental film of the group Throbbing Gristle in concert.
The live in-studio recording of Throbbing Gristle's Heathen Earth, in February of 1980, in front of an invited audience at the studios of Industrial Records Ltd.
Himself
"This video cassette contains a recording of a live performance by TG at Oundle School. The audience, apart one or two members of the staff, was composed completely of school boys between about 8 and 18. In addition to the single camera recording of the gig, certain visual information from the files of Industrial Records Ltd. has been included. Like the TG sound itself, the content and quality of this recording cannot and should not be compared with conventional commercial recordings."
himself
Documentary featuring Peter Christopherson discussing his histories with Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, and Coil - the much missed groundbreaking band he would form with his lover Jhon Balance and develop over decades. Coil came to its end with the tragic and futile November 2004 death of Balance, a death that Peter and many others had feared was coming.
