Direkt zum Inhalt

Warenkorb

  • Anthony Dunne, Fiona Raby

    Not Here, Not Now. Speculative Thought, Impossibility, and…

  • Stephanie Loveless (Ed.)

    A Year of Deep Listening. 365 Text Scores for Pauline…

  • Hal Foster

    Fail Better. Reckonings with Artists and Critics

  • Charlotte Malterre-Barthes (Hg)

    On Architecture and Work. The Political Economy of Space…

  • Mario Asef, Golo Föllmer, Georg Klein,…

    Errant Sound Reader. Thoughts and Practies from the Berlin…

  • Katía Truijen and Brandon LaBelle (Eds)

    Epistemic Imaginaries. Learning as Festivity

  • Brandon LaBelle

    Poetics of Listening: Inner Life, Social Transformation,…

  • Torsten Andreasen, Emma Sofie Brogaard…

    Finance Aesthetics. A Critical Glossary

  • IDEA Magazine

    Idea 410. Shaping Fear: Visualizing Terror and Unease in…

  • IDEA Magazine

    Idea 409. In Search of Beautiful Books: Manuscripts from…

  • Spike

    Spike Art Magazine ISSUE 84 Vulgarity

  • gestalten & Ricardo Bofill

    Ricardo Bofill. Visions of Architecture

  • Miriam Oesterreich

    Branching Out. Botanical Metaphors and Worlding Art History…

  • Initiative Haus Marlene Poelzig, Hannah…

    Haus Marlene Poelzig, Berlin. Abriss und Aufbruch

  • Frederik Schulze, Philipp Wolfesberger

    Dekoloniale Theorien zur Einführung

  • Gabriele Gramelsberger, Hans-Jörg…

    Epistemologien zur Einführung

  • Anne Carson

    The Gender of Sound

  • Esther Buss

    Aus der ersten Person. Filmische Autobiografien/Autofiktion

  • Max Turnheim

    The Use of Space

  • Pascale Obolo, Michalis Pichler,…

    Reading Ecologies: Transforming Publishing in Africa

  • Forty five degrees

    Radical Rituals – 45°N 1°W to 45°N 7°E

  • Matrijaršija

    Optically Suspicious

  • Egon Erwin Kisch

    Karl Marx in Karlsbad

  • Luc Merx

    Cairo’s Plaster Casts

  • Beatrice Leanza

    The New Design Museum. Co-creating the Present, Prototyping…

  • Hito Steyerl

    Medium Hot. Images in the Age of Heat

  • gerade nicht auf Lager
    Martina Angelotti, Matteo Lucchetti,…

    Visible. Art as Policies for Care. Socially Engaged Art (…

  • Pierre Hourquet, Christophe Daviet-…

    Ken Isaacs. How to Build your Own Living Structures

  • Christa Blümlinger (Hg.)

    Teri Wehn Damisch: Transatlantic Crossings Between the Arts

  • Pauline Oliveros

    Pauline Oliveros. Quantum Listening

  • Zasha Colah (Hg)

    Passing the fugitive on / das flüchtge weitergeben. 13.…

  • Christian Nirvana Damato

    Multiplication of Organs. Body, Technology, Identity, Desire

  • Akshar Gajjar, Sonal Mithal

    Living Together. More-Than-Human Ecologies for…

  • Klittern (aesopica)

  • Françoise Fromonot

    The House of Dr Koolhaas

  • Adria Daraban, Frédéric Schnee (Hg.)

    New Tools. Architectural Discourses on the Anthropocene.…

  • Mark Webber (Hg.)

    The Afterimage Reader

  • Jack Self (Ed.)

    Real Review #16

  • Aleksandr Delev (Ed.)

    Silicity Protocols. Issue #5. Imagine

  • Nataša Bodrožić , Antonia Vodanović (…

    (DIS)TRUST THE STORYTELLER. THE CASE OF KRVAVICA CHILDREN…

  • cover Fabien Girardin, Julian Bleecker…

    The Manual of Design Fiction

  • Morgane Billuart

    Becoming the Product. The Critical Internet Researcher as a…

  • Melanie Isverding, Thomas Düllo,…

    texturen Nr. 9 - Schmucken

  • Vaim Sarv with Anne Türnpu, Andreas…

    Radical Runosong. Decolonizing Self and Tradition

  • Boris Chukhovich, Davide del Curto…

    Tashkent Modernism. XX/XXI

  • Arch+ Zeitschrift für Architektur und…

    ARCH+ 260. Wien/Roma – Agency for Better Living (DE/EN)

  • Robert Klanten, Joe Gibbs

    Circular Materials. Innovation and Reuse in Design and…

  • Nicola Borgmann, Elisabeth Endres,…

    Stresstest. Der Deutsche Pavillon auf der 19.…

  • gerade nicht auf Lager
    Erhard Schüttpelz

    Medium, Medium. Elemente einer Anthropologie

  • gerade nicht auf Lager
    Omar El Akkad

    Eines Tages werden alle immer schon dagegen gewesen sein

  • gerade nicht auf Lager
    Stefan Rettich, Sabine Tastel

    Die obsolete Stadt. Wege in die Zirkularität

  • Kai Drewes, Wolfgang Kil

    Pläne und Träume - Gezeichnet in der DDR

  • gerade nicht auf Lager
    Tavia Nyong'o

    Black Apocalypse. Afrofuturism at the End of the World

  • gerade nicht auf Lager
    Évelyne Gayou

    Revolution in Music. The History of the Groupe de…

  • Dorothee Albrecht (Hg)

    Clubs der Zukunft: Gemeinsame Räume in Übergangsgesellschaft

  • Andreas Hild, Andreas Müsseler

    Wohnen weiterbauen. Großwohnsiedlungen in die Zukunft…

  • gerade nicht auf Lager
    Rosanna McLaughlin

    Against Morality

  • Editor: Sascha Bauer, Authors: Sascha…

    The Joinery Compendium. Learning from Traditional…

  • Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky

    Queer Post-Cinema. Reinventing Resistance

  • Rahel Hartmann Schweizer

    Lisbeth Sachs. Animate Architecture

  • Riccardo Badano,Tomas Percival, Susan…

    Common Sensing. Centre for Research Architecture 3

  • Valentin Bansac, Mike Fritsch, Alice…

    Ecotones. Investigating Sounds and Territories

  • Elena Guidetti

    The Potential of Form. How to Transform Existing Buildings…

  • Chantal Akerman

    Chantal Akerman. Eine Familie in Brüssel

  • Alexandre Theriot, Stéphanie Bru,…

    Peter Thomann. Hors Piste

  • Sophie Dars, Carlo Menon (eds.)

    MBL architectes. Impasse des Lilas

  • Zara Pfeifer, Marina Montresor (ed.)

    Calcio Storico. Zara Pfeifer

  • Suely Rolnik

    Sphären des Aufstands. Anmerkungen zur Dekolonisierung des…

  • Urban Fragment Observatory

    Visiting. Inken Baller & Hinrich Baller, Berlin 1966-89…

  • Camille Pradon, Christos Papamichael,…

    Machine Paralysis. A Different Kind of Mobility

  • Sanem Su Avcı, Tonia Tzirita Zacharatou…

    Islands of Exile. Hemmed in by the Sea

  • James Bridle, Hypatia Vourloumis,…

    Mediterranean Icebergs. Invisible Connections Underwater

  • Anke Hagemann and Ava Lynam, Gaoli Xiao…

    Urban-Rural Assembly. A Handbook for Co-Visioning…

  • Mark Crinson, Luisa Lorenza Corna (Hg.)

    Struggles in the Concrete. Architecture and the Marxist…

  • Nicholas A. Phelps, Roger Keil, Paul J…

    Peripheral Centralities. Instances of Anticipatory Urbanism

  • David Bauer, Santiago Martínez Murillo…

    Power, Flows, and Transformation. Portraits of Berlin-…

  • gerade nicht auf Lager
    Owen Hatherley

    Walking the Streets / Walking the Projects. Adventures in…

  • Christian Welzbacher

    Mauern, Lager, Slums. Grundzüge eines neoliberalen…

  • Charlotte Bolwin, Moritz Riemann,…

    Operativität und Sinnlichkeit. Über Gilbert Simondons…

  • Alva Gotby

    Feeling at Home. Transforming the Politics of Housing

  • Andreas Banaski, Erika Thomalla (Hrsg.)

    Die Wahrheit über Kid P.

  • dérive

    dérive N° 99, Sampler (Apr - Jun 2025)

  • gerade nicht auf Lager
    Constantin Petcou, Doina Petrescu, EJ…

    LiveAct. 10 Questions for the Future Here and Now

  • Niklas Angebauer, Jacob Blumenfeld,…

    Umkämpftes Eigentum. Eine gesellschaftstheoretische Debatte

  • Kirsten Angermann

    Die ernste Postmoderne. Architektur und Städtebau im…

  • Nieuwland

    The Lost Termini of Berlin

  • Fareed Armaly

    Orphée 1990

  • Jürgen Ledderboge

    Friedrichstadtpalast. Vom Neubau zum Denkmal

  • Arch+ Zeitschrift für Architektur und…

    ARCH+ 259. Wonders of the Modern World

  • Paola Vigano

    The Biopolitical Garden. Space, Life, Transition

  • Ramon Gras, Jeremy Burke

    City Science. Performance follows Form

  • Paul B. Preciado

    Dysphoria Mundi

  • gerade nicht auf Lager
    Barrault Pressacco

    Wallness. Nature and culture of insulation. Building with…

  • Olivier Kaeser (Ed.)

    Dance First Think Later. The Thinking Body between Dance…

  • Sven Durst

    3 objects (Issue 2)

  • Paul-Antoine Lucas, Bui Quy Son (Hg)

    Housing, Micropolitics, and Pedagogies. Designing and…

  • Itsuko Hasegawa, Kersten Geers, Jelena…

    Itsuko Hasegawa. Shonandai - Exposing the World

  • gerade nicht auf Lager
    Chris Dähne, Martin Mäntele, Helge…

    Programmed for Hope. Architectural Experiments at the HfG…

cover Throbbing Gristle. An Endless Discontent

Throbbing Gristle. An Endless Discontent

In 1976 the British band Throbbing Gristle emerged from the radical arts collective COUM Transmissions through core members Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti, joined by Hipgnosis photographer Peter Christopherson and electronics specialist Chris Carter. Though having performed previously in more low-key arts environments, their major launch coincided with the COUM retrospective exhibition Prostitution at London’s ICA gallery, showcasing and contextualising an array of challenging objects from COUM’s various actions in performance art and pornography. In a deliberately curated strategy inviting press, civic and arts dignitaries, extravagant followers of the nascent punk scene and music journalists, the band created an instant controversy and media panic that tapped into the restrictive climate and encroaching conservatism of late 1970s Britain. Any opportunities that were being explored by a formative punk ethos and movement around sex, censorship and transgression were amplified and exposed by Throbbing Gristle and Prostitution. An outraged Member of Parliament Nicholas Fairbairn took the bait and called the ensemble the ‘wreckers of civilisation’, providing the suitable newspaper headline that would be followed a month later by ‘the filth and the fury’ as the Sex Pistols uttered strong profanities on live television.

The switch from COUM to Throbbing Gristle encompassed a primary mode of expression in making music as opposed to art, to further coincide with the energy of the nascent punk scene. The band quickly developed a radically deviant and challenging reputation through pushing the punk format past its strictures in terms of lyrical themes, amateurism, and considerations of what constitutes music. Through a handful or record releases on their own label Industrial Records, and a sporadic string of live performances, the band nurtured a strong and devoted following including key journalists and fanzine editors of the punk and post-punk scenes such as Jon Savage and Sandy Robertson. The band’s style of exploring harsh pre-recorded sounds, samples of disconcerting narrative and conversation, and feeding all sounds through messy electronic processing devices gave rise to the title industrial music. This was further buttressed by performing a strictly timed set of one hour, and adopting a non-rockstar mode by appearing disinterested and preoccupied with electronic devices. Having given a name and impetus to the industrial music scene, many of their followers and fans formed bands in later years.

Drawing on works such as Andy Bennett’s When the Lights Went Out, this book looks at late 1970s Britain, before, during and immediately after the Winter of Discontent, to situate the activism of Throbbing Gristle in this time. It explores how the band worked in and against the time, and how they worked in and against punk as punk worked in and against the time and place. Punk acts as a mediating factor and nuisance value, as Throbbing Gristle emerged with punk in late 1976, seemingly grappled with it through 1977, and then went on to create and eventually criticise a number of post-punk scenes that had flourished around 1979. Trowell narrates the story through a series of live performances, as this is a point where Throbbing Gristle interact with the various city-scenes around England during their original period of operation (1975-1981). The band reflected (and incorporated into their live music) key tropes form the time, both ‘mainstream’ and fringe (subcultural, avant-garde art, counter-culture, taboo subjects, extremes) such that Throbbing Gristle events had an impact and affect, and Trowell traces these as a series of impressions and reverberations amongst fans who went on to do their own music and projects.


Ian Trowell
Throbbing Gristle. An Endless Discontent
Intellect Books, 2023, 9781789388299
39,00 €