Tommy Turner (2)

American experimental filmmaker, actor, essayist, photographer, sculptor and cross-disciplinary artist (b. 1959, New York City). Tommy Turner is best known as one of the key representatives of New York's Lower East Side "No Wave" and "Cinema of Transgression" movements and an active early collaborator of David Wojnarowicz, Richard Kern and Nick Zedd. Turner began a creative career as a photographer in the late 1970s, publishing Redrum photo zine in New York and contributing photos to Richard Kern's Valium Addict magazine. He befriended Wojnarowicz when they both worked as night bartenders at The Peppermint Lounge. In 1984–85, Tommy Turner co-directed a few seminal experimental "no budget" Super8-to-16mm short films. They include Simonland, a collaboration with Richard Kern, portraying a grotesque televangelist host leading his audience through a twisted, psychotic version of "Simon Says," and 12-min Rat Trap, co-directed with Tessa Hughes-Freeland. Turner's most acclaimed work, Where Evil Dwells, was co-directed with David Wojnarowicz; it evolved around the tabloid news story of Ricky Kasso, a metalhead teenager from Northport, Long Island, who committed a pseudo-satanic brutal murder. "Where Evil Dwells" also featured a title song by Wiseblood, an experimental metal duo of J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus) with Roli Mosimann, ex-member of Swans. He also starred in Richard Kern's Manhattan Love Suicides (1985). Turner's work has been exhibited at prestigious museums and institutions such as the Whitney Museum Of American Art, MoMA and Anthology Film Archives in New York, Yerba Buena Center For The Arts, San Francisco, and The British Film Institute in London, UK. He participated in Feb–April 2012 exhibition/film retrospective at KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin, Germany, "YOU KILLED ME FIRST: The Cinema of Transgression," which became the first European museum exposition dedicated to this influential NYC scene. An eponymous 175p illustrated book was published by Koenig Books, London.