No Discipline: The Post Punk Polymath

The contribution of punk and post-punk artists to popular music, film, fashion and visual art is now almost universally recognised within the academy, curatorial agendas and journalistic documentary. Whether in the institutional celebration of Punk.London (commemorating the 40-year ‘anniversary’ of punk in London), album reissues, or publications, punk occupies a well-established position in the histories of these cultural mediums. And yet, it is often the artists that are most able to be understood within the already existing frameworks of those mediums that become canonised. What about those artists who produced music, film, fashion, performance, visual art and literature concurrently as a way to subvert expectations of disciplinary conformity, and in many cases to avoid exactly the kind of accommodation offered by punk’s increased acceptance? Drawing on my current PhD research and recent publications, this paper will examine the practice of the post-punk polymath, artists whose practice was shaped by the immediate aftermath of punk and operates across several disciplinary boundaries. By discussing the work of Vaginal Davis, Lydia Lunch and Genesis BREYER P-Orridge, it will highlight the difficulty of rationalising these practices when confronted with the historicising impulse of punk documentarists, and the artist’s own commitment to a still punk rejection of historicity. Each artist balances their practice between different modes of production, perhaps achieving a measure of acknowledgement as a musician without corresponding acceptance in their other fields of artistic practice. Despite Lunch’s status as a ‘legend’ of the No Wave post-punk scene in New York, for example, the symbiotic relationship between this musical identity and her investment film, performance and literature is rarely examined in detail. This peripatetic nature is often a deliberate self-sabotage designed to appeal to a limited audience and maintain this critical marginality. An embracing of the polymath, and of the unsuitability of disciplinary focused histories to evaluate the success or significance of these practices, further questions the boundaries between academic disciplines, popular culture, and the niche knowledge of subcultures.