Bight of the Twin

Bight of the Twin tells the story of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and the Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker Hazel Hill McCarthy III’s journey to Ouidah in Benin to explore the origins of the Vodoun (Voodoo) religion.

In Benin, which has the highest national average of twins per birth in the world, twins carry sacred meaning and are venerated as Gods. When one sibling passes away, the remaining twin remembers their lost other, by carrying around a small, carved replica of their dead brother or sister. This engaged and public approach to grief and loss is a stark contrast to the closeted Victorian values that, for the most part, have saddled Western culture.

During filming of the documentary, Breyer P-Orridge is serendipitously initiated into the ‘Twin Fetish’ after Dah Gbedjinon, Vodoun’s Head of Pythons, approaches the artist and tells h/er “you have lost your twin.” Through a series of sacrifices and ceremonies, Breyer P-Orridge reaffirms an eternal bond with h/er late wife and Pandrogyne partner, Lady Jaye.

This film premiere is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Try to Altar Everything.

A Q&A with the filmmakers will follow the screening.

55 min.

About the Filmmakers

Hazel Hill McCarthy III (director/editor) is a Los Angeles-based artist, designer, and filmmaker and co-founder of the project space SHOW CAVE. Her short films have screened at the Warhol Museum, the Barbican, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in London (ICA). McCarthy has collaborated with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge on Thee Psychick Bible (Feral House, 2009) and Thee Psychick Bible of Early Psychic TV and TOPY (Temple ov Psychick Youth) Videos from the P-Orridge archives. She has also collaborated with various other multimedia artists, organizing the touring sister-and-brother video programs Licker License and Gentle Jousting. Other notable video projects have included Lazy Identity, Permanent Vacation, Spread Eagle, Quartz Qube, Moon Illusion, Future Heat, and Summer Sizzlers.

Tiffany Naiman (producer) is an award winning documentary film producer, musicologist, and DJ. Her projects have screened world-wide at festivals, art museums, theaters, and have been released widely across digital platforms. Her other productions include The Glamour & The Squalor (2015), The Cardboard Artist (2015), Exile Nation: The Plastic People (2014), Viva Cuba Libre: Rap is War (2013), and The Mechanical Bride (2012).

Douglas J McCarthy (producer/editor) is a founding member of the British electronic band NITZER EBB, formed in 1982. In 2000, McCarthy began directing music videos, TV commercials, and short films. He lives in Los Angeles.

Lewis Teague Wright (co-producer) is an artist working with sculpture and film. His work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and institutes, including in London, New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, and Mexico City.

Ken “HiWatt” Marshall (sound designer) is a music producer, engineer, and composer known for his work with Skinny Puppy, Scaremeister, Linkin Park, and The Humble Brothers.

About Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (b. Britain, 1950) has been questioning the meaning and substance of identity for nearly half a century through artistic endeavors, willful reincarnation, and physical shapeshifting. Embracing the body as not simply the vessel but the site of the avant-garde impulse, Breyer P-Orridge has reinvented and reintroduced h/erself again and again—as Fluxus pioneer, groundbreaking performance artist, inventor of industrial music, “wrecker of civilization,” essayist and theoretician, and, most recently, with her late wife Lady Jaye as pandrogyne. Breyer P-Orridge’s work has been the subject of numerous international exhibitions, including recently S/he is Her/e at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh (2013), and Life Is A Cheap Suitcase at Summerhall, Edinburgh (2014).