The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
Marie Losier
»My project is not about gender. Some feel like a man trapped in a woman’s body, others like a woman trapped in a man’s body. The pandrogyne says: I just feel trapped in a body. The body is simply the suitcase that carries us around. Pandrogyny is all about the mind, consciousness.«
– Genesis P-Orridge
Change is the re-occurring idea in the biography of Genesis P-Orridge. Over the last 30 years, he has been a key figure on the industrial music scene and is now rated as a pioneer and precursor of acid house and techno music. Together with the love of his live, Jaye, Genesis has stretched the limits of biology. In 2000, they began a series of surgeries in order to resemble one another as closely as possible. Genesis himself, who has changed gender, describes this deconstruction of two individual identities through the creation of an indivisible third as »creating the pandrogyne«.
»Marie Losier is a filmmaker whose trademark is to playfully build up a very personal relationship with her underground role models. Kitchen and garden shots alternate with home-movie performances, magic tricks and archival footage. The film maintains its dynamic rhythm – with the help of Genesis’s cut-up narratives – even when Lady Jaye’s unexpected death turns it into a film about mourning. From that point it revolves around the question of how to die when two have merged into one – and how to go on living.«
– Stefanie Schulte Strathaus
Awards for ›The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye‹
Grand Prize, Indilisboa, Portugal 2011 | Teddy Award und Caligari Award, Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin 2011 | Prix Louis Marcorelles & Prix des Bibliothèques, Cinéma du Réel, Frankreich 2011 | Audience Award, Buenos Aires Film Festival 2011 | Artistic Achievement Award, Outfest Film Festival, Los Angeles 2011
Film programme Leaving a Sinking Ship
Marie Losier
Marie Losier studied literature at the University of Nanterre and art in New York City, where she now lives and works as a filmmaker and curator. If previously she had concentrated on short films, Ms Losier’s The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye is her debut full-length film: Her videos have been shown throughout the world. She has also directed a series of film portraits about avant-garde directors, musicians and composers including Tony Conrad. In addition, Ms Losier works as an actor. In 2013, she was the featured artist at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and a guest scholarship holder of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Berlin.
Films by Marie Losier (Selection)
Byun, Objet Trouve 2012 | Cet Air La 2010 | Papal Broken Dance 2009 | Tony Conrad, DreaMinimalist 2008 | Snow Beard 2008 | Manuelle Labor 2007 | Flying Saucey! 2006 | The Ontological Cowboy 2005 | Electrocute Your Stars 2004 | Bird, Bath, and Beyond 2003 | Sanitarium Cinema 2002
