MOCA Artist Film Series: Genesis P-orridge
MOCA Grand Ave
Saturday, June 7, 2025
3 pm
Free with RSVP

Genesis P-Orridge lived their art to the extreme. A pioneering musician, avant-garde artist, spiritual explorer and gender revolutionary, Genesis has been featured in films and videos, but never the full story… never this intimate... until now. In this authorized but raw and personal documentary, award-winning director David Charles Rodrigues (Gay Chorus Deep South) documents the final year of P-Orridge’s existence as they grapple with mortality and, in the process, reveal the many sacrifices and ultimate payoffs of a life that transcended boundaries. Featuring William Burroughs, Brion Gyson, Timothy Leary, Alice Genese (Psychic TV), David J (Bauhaus/Love and Rockets), Nepalese monks, African witch doctors, and a special cameo by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, plus never-before-seen archival treasures, including performances from Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV.

Director David Charles Rodrigues will be present for a post-screening conversation with artist Ron Athey and Genesse P-Orridge, CEO and creative director of The Estate of Genesis P-Orridge.

David Charles Rodrigues is an award-winning Brazilian filmmaker and Sundance Fellow based in Los Angeles. David started as a graphic novel writer in Brazil and now focuses on films that leverage the power of entertainment and art to deliver vitally human, life-changing messages to audiences around the world. David’s feature doc Gay Chorus Deep South, executive produced by Sheila Nevins and distributed by MTV Documentary Films, won the Tribeca 2019 Audience Award for Best Documentary and was selected by Rotten Tomatoes as one of the Top 20 LGBTQ Films of all time. It is now in the permanent collection of the Academy Museum. In 2022, he released the Netflix original series Neymar: The Perfect Chaos. Selected as one of Esquire’s Top Ten documentaries of 2022, it was one of the most watched docuseries globally on Netflix, making it to the streamer’s Top Ten in over 50 countries with 70 million viewers in the first 28 days. The series is executive produced by LeBron James and Maverick Carter. In 2024, he directed an episode for the Omnivore series, featuring NOMA Chef René Redzepi, on Apple TV and S/he is Still Her/e: The Official Genesis P-Orridge Documentary had its World Premiere during the Tribeca Film Festival.

Ron Athey is a Los Angeles-based artist who has been making performance works since Premature Ejaculation, an actionist/noise duo with Rozz Williams in 1981. Athey tested positive for HIV in 1986, the morbidity and strong community of this time shifted his artistic response and led to the “torture trilogy.” These were theater-based works with a recurring cast of eight presented throughout the UK, Europe, and the US in spaces including ICA London; Cankarjev Dom in Ljubljana; PS122 Gallery in New York; ExTeresa in Mexico City, Festival Atlantico in Lisbon.

In the late ‘90s Athey started creating solo works which include The Solar Anus, Self Obliteration, as well as opera collaborations with Juliana Snapper, Opera Povera, and currently, Carmina Escobar. Monographs Pleading In the Blood and Queer Communion were published in 2013 and 2020 on Intellect Press, followed by the same-titled Amelia Jones- curated survey show Queer Communion at Participant Inc. New York and ICA LA in 2021. In 2023 Athey and collaborator Hermes Pittakos launched an immersive art making workshop in Athens, Greece titled Darkness Visible. Their collaboration includes current videowork Asclepius/Acephale, The Hierophant, and Pasiphae, Witch Queen of Crete: A Gloryhole Origin Story. Athey and Pittakos are currently touring Willendorf, which was performed at The Tanks at Tate Modern in March 2025.

Athey’s esoteric experimentation includes the 15 years series Gifts of the Spirit: Automatic Writing, presented at MAK Center for Art and Architecture in 2025. Ron Athey is represented by Murmurs, Los Angeles.

Genesse P-Orridge is the CEO and Creative Director of The Estate of Genesis P-Orridge. In her role overseeing her father’s legacy, she considers herself a guardian. Since taking on this responsibility, she has co-edited Nonbinary: A Memoir, Genesis P-Orridge’s posthumously published autobiography, with Abrams Books. She served as an executive producer for S/he Is Still Her/e: The Official Genesis P-Orridge Documentary, in which she also appeared. Genesse was interviewed by The New York Times about her work on the exhibition We Are But One at Pioneer Works at Red Hook Labs, which focused on her father’s complex and expansive Pandrogyne Project. Her sculpture installation Altared State, dedicated to her father and honoring Genesis’s influence as a parent, was part of this exhibit and featured in The New York Times. She has also collaborated with clothing brands such as Pleasures and Online Ceramics, releasing limited collections inspired by Genesis’s life, art, and music.