Performance artist and musician Cosey Fanni Tutti is best known for her time in the avant-garde groups Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey. Her autobiography, Art Sex Music, will be released by Faber in April 2017, and she’ll be taking at the Caught by the River stage to discuss the book.
Her most recent musical output, ‘f(x)’, with her group Carter Tutti Void, was released to great critical acclaim in 2016. Her name came about in 1973, before which she performed under the name Cosmosis. According to John Ford, “Cosey Fanni Tutti” was suggested to her by mail artist Robin Klassnick, and it comes from the opera Così fan tutte, meaning literally “They all do the same.”
Cosey Fanni Tutti has consistently challenged the boundaries of music over the past four decades. She represented Britain at the IXth Biennale de Paris as part of COUM Transmissions, whose Prostitution show at the ICA in 1976 caused the Conservative MP Nicholas Fairbairn to declare her, COUM and Throbbing Gristle ‘Wreckers of Civilisation’. Their work continues to be held at the vanguard of contemporary art, some of which resides as part of the Tate permanent collection. Cosey’s work as a pornographic model and striptease artiste has challenged assumptions about morality, pornography and art. Robert Wyatt and Nick Cave can be counted amongst her fans.