Nick Zedd | |
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 Zedd at the 2009Tribeca Film Festival | |
| Born | James Franklyn Harding III (1956-01-25)January 25, 1956 Takoma Park, Maryland, U.S. |
| Died | February 27, 2022(2022-02-27) (aged 63) Mexico City, Mexico |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1979–2015 |
Nick Zedd (néJames Franklyn Harding III; January 25, 1956 – February 27, 2022)[1] was an American filmmaker, author, and painter based inMexico City. He coined the termCinema of Transgression in 1985 to describe a loose-knit group of like-minded filmmakers and artists usingshock value andblack humor in their work. These filmmakers and artistic collaborators includedRichard Kern,Tessa Hughes Freeland,Lung Leg,Kembra Pfahler,Jack Smith andLydia Lunch. Under numerous pen names, Zedd edited and wrote theUnderground Film Bulletin (1984–1990) which publicized the work of these filmmakers. The Cinema of Transgression was explored inJack Sargeant's bookDeathtripping.[2]
Zedd was born inTakoma Park, Maryland, on January 25, 1956. Zedd moved to New York in 1976 to study at Brooklyn'sPratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts.[2]
Zedd directed severalsuper-low-budget feature-length movies, includingThey Eat Scum,Geek Maggot Bingo,War Is Menstrual Envy and numerous short films. WithJen Miller, he was a co-creator of thepublic access seriesElectra Elf (2004–08), featuring New York artists and performers including Miller,Faceboy andAndrew J. Lederer. He served as director of photography on another TV series calledChop Chop (2007), produced by Nate Hill.[2]
Additionally, Zedd acted in such low-budget movies as theSuper 8 filmManhattan Love Suicides (1985),What About Me (1993),Bubblegum (1995),Jonas in the Desert (1997),Terror Firmer (1999), andThus Spake Zarathustra (2001). He also appeared in the documentariesLlik Your Idols (2007) andBlank City (2010).[2]
Zedd is the author of two autobiographical books,Bleed: Part One (1992)[3] andTotem of the Depraved (1997),[4] as well as the self-published novelFrom Entropy to Ecstasy (1996).[5] He also contributed to the anthologiesUp Is Up But So Is Down,[6]Captured[7] andLow Rent.[8] In the 1980s Zedd published ten issues of theUnderground Film Bulletin, azine intended to promote theCinema of Transgression. Issue 4 contained theCinema of Transgression Manifesto, which was also published inThe Theory of Xenomorphosis (1998).[9]
In the early 1990s, Zedd toured withLisa Crystal Carver'sSuckdog Circus, exhibiting his films. Performing with experimentalnoise music band Zyklon Beatles, Zedd released the "Consume and Die" 7-inch single on Rubric Records in 2000.[9]
After exhibiting oil paintings in 2010 at the ADA and Pendu galleries, Zedd presented a major retrospective of films, videos, and paintings at theMicroscope Gallery in Brooklyn.[10][11][12]
In 2012, he attended a retrospective of his films at the eighthBerlin International Directors Lounge and exhibited work at theKW Institute for Contemporary Art in the same city.[13][14]
In 2013, Zedd publishedThe Extremist Manifesto, an essay denouncingcontemporary art and the class structure that promotes it while announcing the emergence of the Extremist Art movement in Mexico City, which sought to subvert the edicts of established art institutions and curatorial ideologues. This manifesto, first released online, then in a self-publishedHatred of Capitalism magazine issued in Mexico City (in English and Spanish) was reprinted a year later by theMuseo Universitario del Chopo,[15] along with two more issues as part of theFanzinoteka exhibition. At a screening at theNew Museum in New York, Zedd was presented with theAcker Award for Lifetime Achievement, a tribute given to "members of the avant garde arts community who have made outstanding contributions in their discipline in defiance of convention, or else served their fellow writers and artists in outstanding ways".[16]
In 2014, Zedd exhibited three motion pictures at theMuseum of Modern Art in New York as part of a posthumous retrospective of films byChristoph Schlingensief, who had cited Zedd as a major influence on his work.[17] Later in 2014, Zedd presented his first public exhibition of paintings in Mexico City, in a group show curated by Aldo Flores at Salon des Aztecas Gallery inCoyoacán. In 2015, Zedd presented his first one-man show of paintings at the V&S Gallery in Mexico City. Zedd also shot an8mm short entitledParadise Lost, which was featured in the anthology filmImpression X (2023).[18]
An outsider artist throughout his life, Zedd never enjoyed commercial success with his films. By the mid-1980s, he regularly resorted to side hustles (such as being a taxi driver), to make ends meet. Peter LeVasseur, Zedd's acquaintance at the time and a former East Village squatter, suggests that he contracted hepatitis C, during that period, from intravenous drug use. "It had to be from intravenous drug use," LeVasseur says. "He seemed to be onheroin andcoke — both were fashionable at the time, thecombo. This was when he was at his deepest, worst part. The pallor, his eyes and sunken cheeks. If you got in his car you’d be afraid".[19]
Zedd died from complications fromcirrhosis of the liver,cancer, andhepatitis C, in Mexico City, on February 27, 2022, at the age of 63.[20] He was survived by his partner of 15 years, Monica Casanova, as well as a son and a step-daughter.[19]
Founder of the Cinema of Transgression movement and part of the late 1970s and early 1980sNo Wave group of underground filmmakers in New York City’sLower East Side, Zedd exerted a significant influence over a number of directors, fromChristoph Schlingensief toQuentin Tarantino. The latter paid tribute to him in hisPalme d'Or-winning film,Pulp Fiction (1994), naming the main antagonist of the "Gold Watch" chapter Zed [sic].
The Canadian electronic music duoZeds Dead took their name from the famous dialogue between Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) and Fabienne (Maria de Medeiros) in Tarantino's film, where he reveals to her that "Zed's dead".
Legendary cult filmmakerJohn Waters, who was as much a fan of Zedd's lurid and provocative style, as Zedd was of his camp classics, likePink Flamingos, wrote: "Nick Zedd makes violent, perverted art films from Hell—he’s my kind of director!",[21] and he considered the title of his debut film,They Eat Scum, as his favorite in cinema history.[19] Similarly, fellow-East Village independent filmmakerJim Jarmusch said that "Nick Zedd’s films are legendary — he is a truly seminal figure in the New York underground".[22]
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