Cosey Fanni Tutti on Her Latest Album, Radical Resilience, and Subverting the Male Gaze
Few artists have so unapologetically blurred the lines between sound, sex, and self as Cosey Fanni Tutti. A pioneering force in the realms of performance art, industrial music, and radical feminist expression, Cosey's career spans over five decades of relentless experimentation and uncompromising defiance.
From her early confrontational work with COUM Transmissions — where her body became both subject and medium — to co-founding the revolutionary industrial group Throbbing Gristle, she helped birth an entire genre while challenging societal norms around art, pornography, and power.
As one-half of the enduring duo Chris & Cosey (and later Carter Tutti), she explored the emotional depths of electronic music, creating intimate sonic landscapes long before the mainstream caught up.
Now back with her latest solo record, 2t2, Cosey Fanni Tutti continues to expand her sonic vocabulary with an album that feels both crushingly intimate and hypnotically unrelenting. Crafted with a sense of reflection and raw experimentation after a period of profound personal loss, 2t2 draws from a lifetime of transgressive artistry, weaving together ghostly electronics, pulsing rhythms, and a tactile sense of memory.
Whether on stage, in a gallery, or through her acclaimed autobiography Art Sex Music, Cosey has remained a fearless provocateur — turning taboo into testimony, and forever reshaping the possibilities of what it means to live as art, and make art from life.
KP: I want to start with a word that immediately came to mind when I started working on this piece for you, and that word was “resistance.” When I think of both you as an individual and your expansive work at large, resilience — in so many different capacities — is what I immediately think of.
In the release for your new record, 2t2, it states that it is “a personal reflection; a sonic realization of [your] life, drawing on [your] powerful inner resolve and expressing it through music.”
What was your inner headspace like when you first conceived of this record?
CFT: It was pretty intense working on the album, but in a good way. It was an empowering thing for me. It was like reclaiming all of the emotions and the inner calm that I really needed after quite a few years of turmoil. It seemed right to be doing that with music because it's such a great form of expression — because it's so physical. You can't get away from it. Once you start listening to something, all of the frequencies and the harmonies and everything, they tweak emotions in the most beautiful way. So I wanted to express the strength that I had to summon up during those few years that were really bad and also to reinstate that strength when I needed it to carry on.
And it was about reflection as well, because I lost quite a few people — it wasn't just one person that I lost over that period. So there are tracks that are slower and more melancholic in a way, but not in a negative, sort of wallowing in sadness — I didn't want it to come across like that. But it just became music and tones that expressed the beautiful memories of the people that I had, that they'll always be with me. And they are now, because they're in the album in the form of sound.
KP: I really love that. We get to that in a bit! But back to the overarching idea of resilience, you are someone who has legendarily pushed past so many obstacles — the brash reputing of the press, difficult personal relationships, multiple transformations of bands and creative endeavors, and society’s conventions at large.
What do you feel makes you so resilient, and what advice would you lend to women who seek to find that same level of perseverance?
CFT: I think one of the basic things I'd say to them — well, I don't really give advice to people because everybody is individual and they have their own experiences to deal with — but I think you really have to believe in yourself. Your gut instinct is so important. I mean, I've dealt with my gut instincts throughout my life, and when things don't feel right, I'm either in a situation where I can just leave, or I can work around it in some way. I think that's really important. And that's the way that you can turn difficult experiences into something positive as well, which I have done many times over the years. It all leads into who you are — it feeds your person, your self.
I'm not someone that says to run away from everything. I think you have to when you find yourself in situations that are challenging; let's use that word. I think a challenge is sometimes a good thing because it gives you knowledge. I'm not someone who wants a boring life. I don't want to do something from nine to five, then maybe go on holiday twice a year. I just want something every day, really, even if it's just sitting in the garden reading a great book about someone else who's doing something fascinating and fantastic. I'll do that! I'm always out there looking for things.
KP: I very much so feel the same. I’d certainly prefer a challenge to the mundanity of a threadbare life.
I have to say, I really loved the entire record, which is certainly a rarity for me. [Laughs]. But I think three of my favorites were “To Be,” “Stolen Time,” and “Threnody,” if you could walk us a little bit through their development and inspiration?
CFT: “Stolen Time” was literally a reference to those moments where I sat in reflection. “Stolen Time” also refers to how you construct the track as well, where you leave certain things out, and you kind of steal a bit of the time signature. So it's relative to the composition of the track as well as to the personal side of it, where I would take time out. I would steal a bit of time to be on my own and think about other people and where I'm going from there on and where we'd been together, that kind of thing. It was quite meditative to me; it sort of took me away for a while. I thought, I can't make this into something that's going to play at a club, or something like that. It just wasn't that kind of sound. So I just played my cornet along to it because it had a kind of jazzy feel to it — a very relaxed feel, chilled out. So that's what I did. And I also find when I play the cornet, it's almost like a voice to me, because it's literally my breath. And that is my voice. If I don't have breath, I don't have a voice, you know? So the cornet in that respect is really special to me because I kind of have a direct relationship between me and the sound through my breathing. So that was “Stolen Time.”
And “Threnody” was the only title I had for any track because I'd promised Andy [Christian], who had been Delia [Derbyshire]'s friend, that I would include them from the drawings — the paintings that he sent me in my next album. Because he said, “Please take them forward. I'm sure Delia would want you to as well. I'll speak for Delia,” he said. So that was all about that — me remembering him, and the correspondence we had just out of the blue about Delia. We also had a kind of collaborative mail art thing going on where he'd send me things to do, and then I'd return them, and he'd add to them. It was quite a beautiful — very short, because he had been given a terminal diagnosis shortly after we started corresponding. But it was a really special relationship. So that was “Threnody.”
And lastly, “To Be” was just to be, to exist, to be yourself, to have the strength to do that, and to dare to do it at all. I was just thinking as I did the track about how I've got this strength back now — I'm going to be who I am, and I'm going on as myself. To dare to do what I want to do, and have the will to do it. I just wanted a very few words that just put that out there. And it can be anything to anyone in that respect. You will, you dare, or you be who you are. I'm not someone who likes lyrics that necessarily tell a story or tell people how to feel, that kind of thing. It just comes from my own experience and what I want to share with people.
KP: I loved them all so much. And in speaking about the record — as you touched on earlier — you said that there is an “acknowledgment that it’s alright to be sad, that’s part of life, but there is so much joy too in our memories of people we lose and in the moments we share with each other. Joy is our resistance.”
I think that looking at joy as a source of resistance — almost a form of rebellion — against the uncontrollable and unpredictable nature of life is so sage.
How do you live out this belief, and how would you direct others to be able to do the same?
CFT: I think, like you said, it is very difficult at certain times. There are those moments that — I can't remember which book it was — but there are these moments where you experience a bubble of joy. I don't know if you've ever had it, but as a child, you get it. You get so excited. It's almost like you hiccup with the excitement that comes bubbling up from inside. I do still experience that now and again. It's so fleeting, but it's so beautiful at the same time. I always hold on to that when things get difficult, that the bubble of joy will come along sometime. But in between those moments, I've got to retain the thought that there is joy.
And I think, especially now, in such dark times where everyone's having to deal with such awful things going on all over the world, it’s very difficult to try and hold on to that. But that’s the only resistance we've got; we have to think that things will get better. If you think historically, there is a time when it does end and things do get better. It tends to be that we have to reach crisis points before it all kind of falls away and good things start happening again. I just hold on to that.
But, you know, I was thinking the other day about the wars… I was thinking when they end, how do people make sense of everything that went on? Everything goes back to this so-called normal, but that is such a weird, traumatic thing to have to deal with. I just don't know how you do it. I mean, my parents had to do it, obviously, because they were in World War II. But it's a difficult one, because they must say, “Well, did that actually happen?” Everyone just goes back to normal, as if nothing even happened. It's quite a bizarre human trait to try and forget that things have happened, you know? But you have to get through it.
KP: You’re absolutely right. I suppose it’s just survival mechanisms — for better or for worse.
You also currently have a solo exhibition ongoing now in New York City — your first in America — at Maxwell Graham, through June 28th. Magazine Actions presents a body of your seminal work between 1972 and 1980, where you “exploited the sex industry for [your] own purposes, to subvert and use it to create [your] own art.” After each shoot you completed, you would purchase two copies from newsstands and sex shops alike, building an inventory for the project. It was this series that premiered at your landmark exhibition, Prostitution, in 1976 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London — perhaps one of the most controversial shows to ever be exhibited.
There is so much to talk about here — I’m sure we could have a few conversations alone simply about its significance and inception — but I’m curious as to the very initial origins of the project itself. Going back to 1972, how did you first conceive of its concept and did you expect the historic backlash that it received?
CFT: No, I didn't. I didn't expect it at all. The response to it really surprised me, because I had actually moved on to something else by then. I had a few jobs left. I didn't know what all the fuss was about. I suppose that's a bit naive.
But yeah, it was like a COUM retrospective in a way, and my works were in there, but they suddenly became the centerpiece of the entire show. And I'm thinking, well, what about all the other action relics and everything else? It really was a surprise.
But prior to that, the idea for the project as such — everything kind of starts as a small spark, and then it just develops and becomes full-blown. Lots of things happen within that kind of curve of development. So the initial one was because… I’m kind of like self-analyzing myself, aren't I?
KP: [Laughs]. No, keep going!
CFT: Well, coming from the generation that I do, sex was not spoken about much. You didn't expose your body, that kind of thing, it had gone on from when I was brought up as a child. But I was very aware of my body from a pretty young age, to be honest. But the 60s, as such, came through with the rebellion and with birth control, so suddenly we were like, here we go, you know? The war is over, and we don't want to be like our parents. And all of this music came through — freedom and festivals started. It was just an explosion of self-awareness and wanting to be in the world, doing what you want to do in the way that you want to do it. I think that's what informed me more than anything else — that explosion of freedom after the war. Especially after I had been held down all my childhood by my father and just culture in general.
So it started with that, and I explored my sexuality as a teenager after I left home. So nudity was a good thing! So when I was doing my mail art, we were corresponding with different people all over the world. And everyone was in the same kind of mood really — exploring their bodies and the world in general. I was doing some collages, and I had gone and bought some magazines from a local shop, which weren't easy to get. They usually arrived in brown envelopes through the post — no one knew what they were. You had to ask for them, and they were usually in the back of the shop. So pornography or sex was a very hidden thing; it was illegal here. But I found some of these magazines, and I had seen a film of a nude model; it was a B movie in black and white. These girls were in it, and I was thinking, that must be so weird to be sitting there naked and have people taking photographs of you, you know? They were in these very 50s hairdos and things like that, a bit like a Bettie Page type thing. So that piqued my interest. And so when I saw the magazines — I used to buy a lot of National Geographic issues and things to do collages with, but then these were there as well. I asked if I could buy them, if they had any more, and I used the nude magazines and collages in my mail art. So that's what triggered it — I looked at it, and I thought that I could do that and be collaging myself, which would be a little bit more honest and true than using someone else's experience, whether it was voluntary or not. So that's how they started.
There was a competition for Men Only back in London — I was in Hull at that time in Yorkshire, over 100 miles away — so I did some photographs with a friend of mine and sent them in. And they basically got back to me and said, “If you want to do it, you've got to come to London.” It's the center of the entire universe in the UK.
KP: [Laughs]. Yeah.
CFT: So when we moved to London, a friend of ours offered us a studio there. And that's what I did. I went with another friend of mine who told me they’d take me to an agency and the whole project kicked off.
And so I had the idea that I wanted to experience every genre of magazine so that I would have the experience of how it works with the different photographers… When you go to high-end magazines, it's very different. The locations are different; the whole experience is different. So I worked from the bottom end to the top end, which was my project aim.
KP: And in speaking of Magazine Actions, you also said, “I extracted all the images of myself and the associated text from each one — those pages were my ‘action,’ to be framed as my work, thereby subverting the ‘male gaze.’”
There lies an inexorable freedom in women’s self-releasing of their bodies and the lack of shame that comes along with it. I had a photographic exhibition back in 2016 called Close To You, which consisted of experimental self-portrait nudes that explored notions of both the permanence and impermanence of love. Although it wasn’t my initial intention, a byproduct of that show was this unchaining from shame and an ultimate freedom.
I think something that men most often hang over us is the humiliation that women often feel around sexuality and our bodies — if you ask a woman what her worst fear is, I believe many would say it’s the releasing of nudes or of a sex tape, for example. But there lies this incredible freedom in ripping the bandaid off for yourself, as if to say, “What are you going to do? Leak me? I already did it myself.” [Laughs].
Kembra Pfahler is a great friend of mine, and in speaking of her performance piece with Richard Kern, Sewing Circle, where she sewed her vagina shut on film, she’s said that a woman showing her vagina is akin to ruining her own life, so she was very happy to “get it over with already,” which always makes me laugh. But again, we have this revisitation of a woman reclaiming her power — you can’t “ruin her life” if she already did it for herself.
I don’t have a specific question here, but I’m always so interested in this notion of women reclaiming our own bodies and experiences and shifting the ownership away from men and into our own domains. Not only does that subvert their power, but it also greatly cements our own.
As one of the most iconic artists that has ever explored this concept, do you have anything to add about this notion of women reclaiming our bodies from the male domain? And I’d be very interested to know if you feel that we have seen any improvement regarding this over time, now 50 years out from your initial exploration of it?
CFT: I think it's how you go about reclaiming or claiming. Well, I don't think you reclaim — it's always been yours. You should claim your body as your own and your own sexuality. I think now there's a tendency that I've seen… I think at least one, ah, I can't remember her name. Is it Bonnie Blue or something like that? The woman who screwed, like, a thousand guys in one go?
KP: I don't know. Oh wait, yes! I don’t know her name, but I did read about that.
CFT: That really causes problems for me. I don't understand that at all. I don't understand where that's coming from or what purpose it has. I really don't. I mean, I saw a documentary years ago. Was it Annabel Chong? Do you know that one?
KP: Yes. I haven’t seen it, but I have heard about it.
“We have the ability to empower ourselves and to subvert the male gaze in whatever way we can, whenever we can. We’re ready to face that.”
CFT: It’s a similar thing. I think she might have started the whole thing off. But I remember watching that and thinking that I could see the kind of inner torment that she had. And this is what I mean about how you go about it — some people might think that they're claiming their sexuality and themselves by doing certain things like that when in actual fact, if it's painful in that respect, I don't think you are. I really don't, because it shouldn't be painful. It should be revolutionary and a feeling of empowerment. I really don't get it.
And I've worked in that industry, and there were times when I've seen girls really reluctant to do certain things, and I've quietly made sure that I had a side talk with them and said, “If you don't want to do this, then just don't do it.” Together we made sure that they weren’t pressured into doing it. We gave them an alternative. I've done that on set before, and girls have really helped each other out in that respect.
But I think the whole concept of subverting the male gaze is down to an individual thing. I don't think those kinds of like… Well, I don't know if it's subverting the male gaze, that kind of screwing so many guys in a certain length of time… Is it even about that? I think it goes against everything that we're trying to achieve, in actual fact. So it worries me on a personal level for the person that's doing it. It's very worrying. I'm worrying about what kind of signal that gives other women and to men that women are just a piece of meat, you know? We don't need it. We've got enough to deal with right now with everything else that's going on.
I remember watching The Handmaid's Tale the first time around, and Chris said, “Oh, there's a new series!” I said, “I don't want to watch it again because I think that's going to happen soon.” He said, “What?” I went, “It's just too likely to take its form in reality at some point.”
KP: Yes, it’s a little too on the nose at the moment.
CFT: Absolutely. We've got a lot to fight for still, but the important thing to remember is that we own ourselves and our sexualities. We have the ability to empower ourselves and to subvert the male gaze in whatever way we can, whenever we can. We're ready to face that.
KP: We absolutely are. And to speak about the exhibition in a more macro, simplistic way, do you feel that society has gotten any freer over the past 50 years, or are we still very much so bound by the same puritanical conventions as we were then?
CFT: Yeah. Perhaps a different kind of puritanical convention.
KP: I’ve thought about this, but I think especially over the past 10 years, we have gone so… I mean, I'm in the States, so you can imagine what we're going through here right now.
CFT: Oh, I can.
KP: But in the past 10 years, I think we've gone back about 50, 60 years, and it's unfortunate. And so thinking about this question in terms of time, it's a bit depressing, I think.
CFT: Yeah, it truly is. And I certainly agree with you. We are going backwards, but it doesn't mean that we can't fight it. We have to fight it. It's imperative. We can't allow it to happen. We just can't.
KP: And speaking of fighting, you were infamously labeled as a “wrecker of civilization” by a conservative MP following the debut of the initial exhibition. How much do you feel it is an artist’s responsibility to “wreck” civilization? In such a wayward world where love and acceptance seem to be radical, is “wrecking” civilization the only way to fix it?
CFT: I don't think you should, to use his word, “wreck” it. I think you should rock it.
KP: [Laughs]. Okay! That’s a lot better.
CFT: And I don't mean in terms of rock and roll. I mean, you shake it. Shaking civilization is always a good thing. Staying static is where things can get really, really dangerous, I think, because people get entrenched in only one opinion or one way of life, which doesn't suit everybody. We're all very different. If technology can move on, why can't human beings? That is what I’m always thinking. Technology gives us the tools to do something fantastic, and at the moment, what do we do? We just use it to destroy each other. It's absolutely insane. And it's criminal, the whole activity of divisiveness and closing people down. It's horrendous. We're not here for that. We're here for sharing and being together and helping one another — not destroying one another.
KP: You’re absolutely right. If you could give your younger self advice, what would it be?
CFT: I think it has to do with age. I wish I understood then the reduction in energy that you feel — that you won't always have the energy that you've got when you're younger to do and pursue things at the speed that you do. That's one of the great things about youth — the acceleration of activities, and that's all down to you being able to do it physically. I would tell myself that to make sure I did enough beforehand. To do more, then do even more. But I think I would think that.
KP: I know you said earlier that you don’t offer advice, but I’m trying to think of a way to subvert that. [Laughs]. If you could tell women who seek a future in the arts one thing, what would it be?
CFT: Don't look for a career, because that goal will just get in the way of you expressing yourself. Careers can be a career pursuit in an economic way… “I have a career, and I'll make my money and living out of doing this.” I think that will just get in the way of what you actually want to do and what you want to express, because you'll always be thinking about I do this, it might not suit this gallery, or, if I create this music, it might not suit the music that's out now. You’ve just got to do what you want to do. I mean, I found myself lucky that I've done that all my life. And although it took 30 or 40 years for people to actually recognize what I did as being useful in this time, I'm really happy that I did it. I would never not have done it. It's just really good that people can recognize it for what it was then. Its time has come in a way, so that justifies my thoughts on not doing it for a career, but instead as something that you feel you want to do. You have that drive to externalize your feelings in whatever medium you choose, which is what I do. It can be anything, as long as you get it out there.
KP: Something that's born of passion, rather than monetary gain.
CFT: Absolutely.
KP: What do you feel makes a provocative woman?
CFT: Someone who knows herself and what she wants from life. And she doesn't cowtail to other people. That doesn't mean to say that you have to be horrible to people; it just means that you have to keep driving yourself and accept things that come in and then deal with them — assimilate them and make use of them in a way that is for you individually and for the people. I'm someone who loves the thought of being and sharing with other people. So if you're going to go and be provocative in that way, then provocation is something that you're going to do just to get a response, basically. But I don't do anything to get a response. So I'm coming from the opposite side of your question, in a way.
What is a provocative woman? A provocative woman is doing something that she wants to do, but not everyone wants to receive it. So you call it provocative, but you're not. What's the problem? I suppose it’s a bit like the Prostitution exhibition. I just did what I wanted to do, what I felt I needed to do, yet you're calling me provocative, you know?
It's not provocation; it's just self-expression.
Photography: Chris Carter
