Biographies
Charlie Ahearn
Filmmaker, (born in Bibghamton,NY. This identical twin (his brother is the sculptor John) started making art films in the '70s, then his first narrative feature in 1979, the Super-8 Deadly Art of Survival. Charlie next turned to the genre of classic comedy in the 16mm film
Twins with performance artist Michael Smith. Ahearn continued his exploration of the emerging hip-hop culture with the cult classic Wild Style, which saw national commercial release. He continues his work in film with the well-received video
Doing Time on Times Square, and works on the artists Kiki Smith, Tom Otterness and Jane Dickson.
Liza Bear
Filmmaker, Author. This one-time British subject played a central role in the NYC avant-garde artworld of the '70s as co-editor (with Willoughby Sharp) of the magazine Avalanche. She moved on to experiment with telecommunications and satellite TV, then launched an artists cable TV show in 1982. In the '80s she turned to filmmaking, producing the short Oued Nefifik and some video documentaries on the Moroccan crisis, then the narrative feature
Force of Circumstance, also set in Morocco and Washington, D.C.
Nick Zedd
Filmmaker and Author. The notorious NYC underground filmmaker has relentlessly promoted his work and cultivated his radical nihilist image since his
They Eat Scum appeared in 1979. This Super-8 story of punk-rock cannibals had the good fortune to be slammed first in Variety then in the Wall Street Journal as an example of the perils of public access television. Since then, Zedd has promoted the ``Cinema of Transgression'' through his rabid occasional 'zine Underground Film Journal, and appeared in the work of other splattercore filmmakers and NYC-area students. In recent years this self-created bad boy of NYC cinema has won screenings at the Museum of Modern Art and Anthology Film Archives.
Kembra Pfahler
Artist and Singer (born in California.) Currently fronting the shock-rock band Karen Black, this underground cult queen made her reputation as a performance artists in L.A. and NYC in the early '80s, later joined by her husband (and Karen Black cohort) Samoa. Pfahler's films of the mid- and late-'80s meld the outlandishness and metaphoric inventiveness of her live pieces with the careful eye of a visual artist, alternately hysterical, gruesome and serenely esthetic.
See Straight Jackie
Bradley Eros & Jean Liotta
Both Eros and Liotta hail from previous collaborative backgrounds in theater, music and film/media, including Erotic Psyche (Eros) and the Living Theatre and Gargoyle Mechanique (Liotta). Their films and video work interfaces primal live performance, appropriated imagery, and ancient symbologies with frenetic pacing and hard-edged musical scores. The sentral concern of the work is a mystic exploration of the place of the human body within a techno-primitivist semiotic. With a highly esthetic, deliberated visual framing, manipulation and collage, Eros and Liotta are the heirs of Kenneth Anger and Harry Smith.
See Mediamystics
Clayton Patterson
Artist (born in Calgary, Canada, 1948). Long-time East Village artist, photographer and activist, Patterson rose to prominence (and controversy) with his video documentation of the 1988 Tompkins Square Park police riot. Patterson opted for jail and a lengthy court fight rather than turn over the original tapes to local authorities. He has also extensively documented various underground subcultures, including the homeless and squatters in their numerous confrontations with police, and ``transgressive'' artists such as Zedd, Joe Coleman, Steven Oddo and tattoo artists.
See Tompkins Square Park.
Mitch Corber
Artist and Poet (born in Los Angeles, CA). A participant in the mid-'70s performance art scene, Corber began making tapes on a 1/2" Sony Portapak. This musician, poet, and photographer was a pioneer artist-producer on NYC cable TV with his Original Wonder show in 1978, worked closely with Colab TV and their Potato Wolf artists live TV series, and continues to produce Radio Thin Air a music and poetry video magazine show for cable today.
See John Cage: Man & Myth and
Works
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