Purple #45 – The New Glamour Issue – Playlist #1 by Cosey Fanni Tutti

Musician, artist, and pioneer of performance art Cosey Fanni Tutti assembled this playlist for the New Glamour Issue of Purple. After moving to London in the early Seventies, she began what she referred to as “Magazine Actions” by modelling for adult magazines. In these fictions, Cosey was assigned different names and personas by the editors. In 1977 and as a related action, Cosey began working in London as a striptease artist under the alter ego and stage name “Scarlet.”

The records she has chosen are a selection of 7 inch singles played when Scarlet took to the stage. The sequencing is carefully considered, following the passages of Scarlet’s striptease. The music functioned in service of Cosey‘s dancing, unfolding through distinct movements: shifts in tempo, mood, and sentiment. Cosey‘s performances extend directly from lived experience. Across her visual practice, a private language emerges, using self-portraiture to expose how desire can be constructed, glamorised, and deliberately provoked.