We bring to you an evening of one-of-a-kind art objects by a giant of the experimental film world: Luther Price.
Tara Merenda Nelson joins us to give a brief talk on Visual Studies Workshop’s recent art book New Utopia and Light Fractureby Luther Price. Then we’ll witness a once-in-a-lifetime viewing of Price’s original, handmade slides, presented on 35mm slide projectors.
We’ll also be presenting two of Price’s Super 8 films: Run (1994, 13 min) and Green (1987-1988, 36 min), both from unique prints borrowed from Canyon Cinema.
Doors open at 7:30. Show starts at 8. Total program runtime is approximately 80 minutes.
This event is generously supported by University of Pittsburgh Film and Media Studies
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About Luther Price
LUTHER PRICE (January 26, 1962 – June 13, 2020) was a prodigious artist whose work unearthed the deepest, darkest corners of the human experience. Working in film, sculpture, and performance, his haunting portrayals are often manifestations of personas drawn from lived traumas, thickly layered with paint, glitter, glue, and bodily fluids. Price’s films are sculptural compositions in which images of eviscerated bodies, raw meat, hardcore gay porn, and laughing clowns occupy the same psychic space as quiet scenes of street corners, blue skies and empty clotheslines. Born in Marlborough, Massachusetts, Price attended the Massachusetts College of Art in the early 1980’s, where he studied sculpture and performance before turning to Super 8 film after being shot in Nicaragua in 1985. With the support of Super 8 filmmaker SAUL LEVINE, his teacher at MassArt, Price pushed the boundaries of the “home movie” medium, stepping into each role of the fractured family to conjure complicated apparitions on the scratched surface of the film. His practice evolved to include found footage and “handmade film” techniques, incorporating ink, dirt, spit, splices and the process of decay into the production. Price’s work with 16mm found footage is some of the most sophisticated in the tradition, with more than 80 original titles created in the course of his career. In the last decade of his life, Price created breathtaking collages on 35mm slides, combining the techniques he had mastered in his film works to culminate in single frame compositions. A selection of these slides can be seen in New Utopia and Light Fracture by Luther Price.
About Tara Merenda Nelson
TARA MERENDA NELSON is a filmmaker, curator, programmer and lecturer working with film and digital media. At Visual Studies Workshop, Tara oversees the cataloging, preservation and interpretation of the VSW collections. She is the lead programmer for the VSW Salon, and the Managing Editor of VSW Press. Recent publications from VSW Press’s Film Art Book (FAB) imprint include: Bouquets 11-20: Notebooks by Rose Lowder (2018); Measuring Time by Ephraim Asili (2020); Feral Domestic by Dani and Sheilah ReStack (2022)
