You Killed Me First

Opening: Saturday, 18.02.2012, 17 - 22 h

You Killed Me First
The Cinema of Transgression

Karen Finley, Tessa Hughes-Freeland, Richard Kern, Lung Leg, Lydia Lunch, Kembra Pfahler, Casandra Stark Mele, Tommy Turner, David Wojnarowicz, Nick Zedd

There will be blood, shame, pain and ecstasy, the likes of which no one has yet imagined.
Nick Zedd

Nightmarish scenarios of violence, dramatic states of mind, and perverse sexual abysses – the films of the Cinema of Transgression that were consciously aimed at shock, provocation, and confrontation, bear witness to an extraordinary radicality. In the 1980s a group of filmmakers from the Lower East Side in New York went on a collision course with the conventions of American society. Transcending all moral or aesthetic boundaries, the low budget films reveal social hardship met with sociopolitical indifference. Sometimes shot with stolen camera equipment, the films contain strident analyses of life in the Lower East Side defined by criminality, brutality, drugs, AIDS, sex, and excess.

Even though the movement has remained largely unknown, the Cinema of Transgression has been a significant influence for later generations of artists.

You Killed Me First at KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin is the first exhibition on the Cinema of Transgression.

Entry only over 18 years

The exhibition is curated by Susanne Pfeffer.

With the generous support by the Capital Cultural Fund, Berlin.