Cinema Events Calendar

Visiting Film & Video Artists & Speakers Series

  • Location: Lecture Hall 6 (unless otherwise noted)
  • Time: 7 pm (unless otherwise noted)

visiting presenter on the work of Luther Price

Luther Price’s stunning work with slides is documented in New Utopia and Light Fracture by Luther Price, a 2023 VSW Press publication featuring copious images derived from the depths of Price’s 35mm collages as well as intimate email correspondence from Price to VSW editor Tate Shaw 2017–18 and an essay by Ed Halter of Light Industry, Brooklyn. In celebration of this publication, Tara Nelson, VSW Curator and Managing Editor for the VSW Press, is presenting two sets of Price’s double-projected slides—New Utopia and Light Fracture (both 2017), which Luther Price donated to the VSW archives in 2017. Tara will speak on the publication, the slides, and on Price.
Tara 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).
Luther Price (January 26, 1962 – June 13, 2020) was a prolific artist whose work explored the deepest, darkest corners of the human experience. Working in film, performance, sculpture, photography and mixed media, his haunting images were often composed from found elements, thickly layered with ink, paint, glue, tape 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. 
Luther Price came to Visual Studies Workshop as a visiting artist in 2017 to give a week-long workshop on handmade film. Though the workshop ended tumultuously, Price maintained a sporadic and sometimes fraught correspondence with VSW Press Editor Tate Shaw. Though a book project was begun, it was temporarily tabled, and Price died in 2020 at the age of 58. The project was continued posthumously as intended by the artist and VSW Press. New Utopia and Light Fracture by Luther Price includes images derived from the depths of Price's 35mm collages, representing some of the most accomplished work of the artist's career. The sparse text in the book comes solely from Price's messages to Shaw over a two year period. VSW Press offers an enhanced eBook companion to this publication, which provides access to view both series of 35mm slides digitally.