COUM released one song produced in this early period, "Dry Blood Tampax", on their 1983 cassette 23 Drifts to Guestling. They recognised that they would never become a commercial success and so sought out other forms of funding, successfully applying for a small Experimental Arts Grant from the Yorkshire Arts Association, a publicly funded body.. Now openly describing themselves as performance artists, COUM looked up to the work of the Dadaists and emphasised the amateur quality of their work, proclaiming that "[t]he future of music lies in non-musicians", and strongly contrasting themselves with the classically trained figures involved in progressive rock which had attained mainstream popularity in Britain at the time.. P-Orridge began to take an increasing interest in infantilism, founding a fictitious school of art, the L'ecole de l'art infantile, whose work culminated in a 1983 event known as the Baby's Coumpetition held at Oxford University's May Festival, which he had co-organised with Robin Klassnik and Opal L. Nations. Another invention of P-Orridge's at this time was his Ministry of Antisocial Insecurity (MAI), a parody of the governmental Ministry of Social Security.. He also set about working on creating a character known as Alien Brain, and in July 1972 performed the World Premiere of The Alien Brain at Hull Arts Centre, a multi-media happening that involved the audience and which had received funding from the Yorkshire Arts Association.. That summer, they also entered the National Rock/Folk Contest at the New Grange Club in Hull with a set entitled This Machine Kills Music; a parody of the slogan "this machine kills fascists"..
