In this episode, Amy amplifies the story of Cosey Fanni Tutti who’s work is a ritual awakening. Cosey, born Christine Carol Newby, was a regular girl, raised in a port town in the postwar drudgery and PTSD hangover of England 1951, who would go on to become irregular and shape the way we think about art, sex, music and the occult. Christine eventually became Cosey, short for Cosmosis, a portmanteau of Cosmos and Osmosis – a gradual absorption of the whole of the universe. She added the Fanni Tutti when the surname was suggested to her by a friend, mail artist Robin Klassnick, based on the title of the opera Così fan tutte, meaning literally “That’s What All Women Do.” or “all women are the same.”
Please note that while in America a fanny refers to a bum, a bottom, a butt, in the UK, fanny means vagina. So if we take a moment to break it down, her name becomes Cosmos Osmosis Vagina Everything. Which somehow, strangely, makes perfect sense.
In her lifetime, she has released into the world countless actions, performance and visual art pieces and sensory installations, as well as over fifty albums of music. As one fan wrote, “Cosey Fanni Tutti helped permanently alter modern musical consciousness with sonic and visual transgressions rooted in electronic experimentation and socio-political confrontation.”
