Cosey Fanni Tutti (born Christine Carol Newby; 4 November 1951) is an English performance artist, musician, and writer, best known for her time in the avant-garde groups Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey.
Tutti was a performer with COUM Transmissions of which she was a founding member in 1969. Her addition changed the nature of the group, which, when she joined, was still mostly a musical venture. From that point on, COUM performances became events or, in 1960s parlance, happenings, involving props, costumes, dance, improvisation and street theatre. As an installation artist, she was selected in 1975 to represent Britain at the IXth Biennale de Paris. Tutti worked for two years on the 'Prostitution' project as part of COUM Transmissions in which she created a revealing exhibition about the porn and sex industry. For this project, she worked as a model for sex magazines and films (see section on Pornography below). It was shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London in 1976. Censorship restrictions were imposed on the exhibition so only one image could be viewed at a time. The project also involved a performance and discussion events in which women working in the sex industry and the public could enter a dialog about issues surrounding this industry and prostitution.
Music was used in some of Tutti's performance art. The use of music led to Tutti's interest in the concept of 'acceptable' music and she went on to explore the use of sound as a means of physical pleasure or pain.[12] In 1976 she co-founded the group Throbbing Gristle with Chris Carter, Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and Genesis P-Orridge. They are widely regarded as pioneers of industrial music. They made their public debut in October 1976 on COUM exhibition Prostitution, and, the following year, released their debut single, "United / Zyklon B Zombie", followed by an album, The Second Annual Report (1977).
The band released several subsequent studio and live albums- including D.o.A: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle (1978), 20 Jazz Funk Greats (1979), and Heathen Earth (1980) - on their own record label Industrial Records, building a notorious reputation with their transgressive and confrontational aesthetics; they included the extensive use of often disturbing visual imagery (such as fascist and Nazi symbolism, and pornography), as well as that of sound manipulation (noise; pre-recorded tape-based samples) influenced by works of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin.
Following the disbanding of Throbbing Gristle in 1981, Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson went on to form Psychic TV, while Tutti and Chris Carter continued to record together under the moniker Chris and Cosey. In honour of the dawn of the 21st century, Chris and Cosey changed their stage name to Carter Tutti.
In 2004, after twenty three years apart, all four original members of Throbbing Gristle reunited, and issued a new 12" recording, TG Now. The band continued to collaborate sporadically, and began to perform live shows together for the first time in over two decades. In April 2009, Throbbing Gristle toured the US, appearing at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, and playing shows in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago.Carter and Tutti performed with Nik Colk Void of Factory Floor at Mute's Short Circuit Festival on 13 May 2011. A live album of the show, with an additional studio track, was released as Transverse in 2012, under the name Carter Tutti Void. Tutti continues to release solo recordings, including a retrospective deluxe box set with many photos and text, called Time To Tell, and she continues to work as a performance artist in the Dada tradition. She co-edited (with Richard Birkett) and published (Koenig Books, 2012), Maria Fusco's Cosey Complex, is the first major publication to discuss and theorise Tutti as methodology. In April 2017 she published her autobiography Art Sex Music.
