Bight of the Twin trailer by Hazel Hill McCarthy III

BIGHT OF THE TWIN is a feature-length documentary exploring Vodun (Voodoo, Voudou, Vodoun), one of the world’s oldest and most misunderstood religions. Los Angeles based artist and filmmaker, Hazel Hill McCarthy III, documents Cultural Engineer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge on her journey to Ouidah, Benin in search of the truths and origins of Vodun. 

Cultural engineer, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is serendipitously initiated into the ‘Twin Fetish’ – a practice within Vodun that honors twins. Through a series of ceremonies, Genesis reaffirms an eternal bond with h/er late wife and Pandrogyne partner, Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge. This is a deeply interdimensional connection of alternative Western culture in tangent with ancient African ritual. In this story we begin to see the link between Pangrogyny and the ‘Twin Fetish’, an activation of a complete state, and in fact the true fundamentals of Vodun religion. In Benin, which has the highest national average of twins per birth*, twins carry a sacred meaning. When one twin passes away, the living twin remembers its spirit by carrying around a small, carved replica of their dead brother or sister. The deceased twin is described as ‘having gone to the forest to look for wood’. This engaged and very public approach to grief and loss is in stark contrast to the closeted Victorian values that Western culture has been saddled with. Transcending assumptions of what it means to be “gendered”, lead character, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, embodies a re-union and re-solution of male and female, seeking to perfect a hermaphroditic state through Pandrogyny. Genesis and Lady Jaye underwent a series of surgical procedures to become gender-neutral human beings that looked identical to one another. In 2007 Lady Jaye passed away and “dropped h/er body”. Since that time Genesis has continued to represent the amalgam BREYER P-ORRIDGE in the material world while Lady Jaye represents the amalgam BREYER P-ORRIDGE in the immaterial world creating an ongoing inter-dimensional collaboration. By exploring their non/all-gender we begin to see the link between Pangrogyny and the ‘Twin Fetish’. As the French anthropologist, Michel Cartry, wrote in 1973, “Twins are a reminder and an incarnation of the mythical ideal. It is as though they are representatives of a state of ontological perfection, a state which the non-twins have completely lost. The first living creatures were couples of twins of opposite sexes. The loss of twin hood… is the price that man had to pay for a sin committed by one of the ancestors. But the birth of twins is a reminder of that happy condition, and that is why it is celebrated everywhere with joy”.

Tracks by COUM Transmissions, DJMREX and Atem Hein.

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