Zedd was born in Takoma Park, Maryland, on January 25, 1956. Zedd moved to New York in 1976 to study at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts.3
Zedd directed several super-low-budget feature-length movies, including They Eat Scum, Geek Maggot Bingo, War Is Menstrual Envy and numerous short films. With Jen Miller, he was a co-creator of the public access series Electra Elf (2004–08), featuring New York artists and performers including Miller, Faceboy and Andrew J. Lederer. He served as director of photography on another TV series called Chop Chop (2007), produced by Nate Hill.4
Additionally, Zedd acted in such low-budget movies as the Super 8 film Manhattan Love Suicides (1985), What About Me (1993), Bubblegum (1995), Jonas in the Desert (1997), Terror Firmer (1999), and Thus Spake Zarathustra (2001). He also appeared in the documentaries Llik Your Idols (2007) and Blank City (2010).5
Zedd is the author of two autobiographical books, Bleed: Part One (1992)6 and Totem of the Depraved (1997),7 as well as the self-published novel From Entropy to Ecstasy (1996).8 He also contributed to the anthologies Up Is Up But So Is Down,9 Captured10 and Low Rent.11 In the 1980s Zedd published ten issues of the Underground Film Bulletin, a zine intended to promote the Cinema of Transgression. Issue 4 contained the Cinema of Transgression Manifesto, which was also published in The Theory of Xenomorphosis (1998).12
In the early 1990s, Zedd toured with Lisa Crystal Carver's Suckdog Circus, exhibiting his films. Performing with experimental noise music band Zyklon Beatles, Zedd released the "Consume and Die" 7-inch single on Rubric Records in 2000.13
After exhibiting oil paintings in 2010 at the ADA and Pendu galleries, Zedd presented a major retrospective of films, videos, and paintings at the Microscope Gallery in Brooklyn.141516
In 2012, he attended a retrospective of his films at the eighth Berlin International Directors Lounge and exhibited work at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in the same city.1718
In 2013, Zedd published The Extremist Manifesto, an essay denouncing contemporary 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-published Hatred of Capitalism magazine issued in Mexico City (in English and Spanish) was reprinted a year later by the Museo Universitario del Chopo,19 along with two more issues as part of the Fanzinoteka exhibition. At a screening at the New Museum in New York, Zedd was presented with the Acker 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".20
In 2014, Zedd exhibited three motion pictures at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of a posthumous retrospective of films by Christoph Schlingensief, who had cited Zedd as a major influence on his work.21 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 in Coyoacán. In 2015, Zedd presented his first one-man show of paintings at the V&S Gallery in Mexico City. Zedd also shot an 8mm short entitled Paradise Lost, which was featured in the anthology film Impression X (2023).22
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 on heroin and coke — both were fashionable at the time, the combo. 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".23
Zedd died from complications from cirrhosis of the liver, cancer, and hepatitis C, in Mexico City, on February 27, 2022, at the age of 63.24 He was survived by his partner of 15 years, Monica Casanova, as well as a son and a step-daughter.25
Founder of the Cinema of Transgression movement and part of the late 1970s and early 1980s No Wave group of underground filmmakers in New York City’s Lower East Side, Zedd exerted a significant influence over a number of directors, from Christoph Schlingensief to Quentin Tarantino. The latter paid tribute to him in his Palme d'Or-winning film, Pulp Fiction (1994), naming the main antagonist of the "Gold Watch" chapter Zed [sic].
The Canadian electronic music duo Zeds 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 filmmaker John Waters, who was as much a fan of Zedd's lurid and provocative style, as Zedd was of his camp classics, like Pink Flamingos, wrote: "Nick Zedd makes violent, perverted art films from Hell—he’s my kind of director!",26 and he considered the title of his debut film, They Eat Scum, as his favorite in cinema history.27 Similarly, fellow-East Village independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch said that "Nick Zedd’s films are legendary — he is a truly seminal figure in the New York underground".28
John Franklyn Harding III, birth announcement. Kearney Daily Hub, January 25, 1956. Kearney, Nebraska. https://www.newspapers.com/image/708700878/ ↩
"Nick Zedd (1958–2022)". Artforum. February 28, 2022. https://www.artforum.com/news/nick-zedd-1958-2022-88031 ↩
Zedd, Nick (1992). Cohen, Ira (ed.). Bleed: Part One. Hanuman Books. ISBN 978-0937815465. 978-0937815465 ↩
Zedd, Nick (March 1, 1997). Totem of the Depraved. Two Thirteen Sixty One Publications. ISBN 978-1880985359. 978-1880985359 ↩
Zedd, Nick (January 1, 1996). From Entropy to Ecstasy. ASIN B001D4XRGQ. /wiki/ASIN_(identifier) ↩
Stosuy, Brandon; Cooper, Dennis; Myles, Eileen, eds. (October 15, 2006). Up Is Up, But So Is Down: Documenting New York's Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992. New York University Press. ISBN 978-0814740118. 978-0814740118 ↩
Patterson, Clayton (May 3, 2005). Captured: A Film/Video History of the Lower East Side. Seven Stories Press. ISBN 9781583226742. 9781583226742 ↩
Hollander, Kurt (September 20, 1994). Low Rent: A Decade of Prose and Photographs from the Portable Lower East Side. Grove Press. ISBN 978-0802134080. 978-0802134080 ↩
"Films of Nick Zedd". The New Museum. July 19, 2013. Retrieved March 1, 2022. https://www.newmuseum.org/calendar/view/196/films-of-nick-zedd ↩
"Nick Zedd | WOG | October 1–30, 2010". ADA Gallery. Archived from the original on March 25, 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20120325100522/http://www.adagallery.com/Nick_Zedd1.html ↩
"11-05-10 / PENDV GALLERY featuring the art of NICK ZEDD". Pendv Org Arts & Actions. November 9, 2010. Retrieved March 1, 2022. http://pendunyc.com/events/11-05-10 ↩
"Nick Zedd | Eye Transgress | January 8 – February 7, 2011 | Opening January 8, 7-10pm". Microscope Gallery. Archived from the original on May 2, 2013. Retrieved March 1, 2022. http://www.microscopegallery.com/?page_id=913 ↩
"in attendance of Nick Zedd". Directors Lounge. January 19, 2012. Retrieved March 1, 2022. https://directorslounge.net/16504907584-2 ↩
"YOU KILLED ME FIRST | 19. 2.– 8. 4. 12". KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Archived from the original on December 4, 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20141204203025/http://www.kw-berlin.de/en/exhibitions/you_killed_me_first_55 ↩
"El zine invisible | Nick Zedd". Museo Universitario Del Chopo (in Spanish). Retrieved March 1, 2022. https://www.chopo.unam.mx/fanzinoteca/2014/NickZedd.html ↩
Herman, Jan (June 2, 2013). "For Nonconforming Artists, the Envelope Please". Arts Journal. Retrieved March 1, 2022. http://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2013/06/for-nonconforming-artists-the-envelope-please.html ↩
"Short Films by Nick Zedd and Christoph Schlingensief". Museum of Modern Art. May 26, 2014. Retrieved March 1, 2022. https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/152 ↩
{{cite web|access-date=November 3, 2024|title=Impression X|url=https://mubi.com/en/gr/films/impression-x=[[MUBI}} https://mubi.com/en/gr/films/impression-x= ↩
"Nick Zedd, East Village transgressive filmmaker, dies at 63". The Village Sun. March 2, 2022. Retrieved November 3, 2024. https://thevillagesun.com/nick-zedd-east-village-transgressive-filmmaker-dies-at-63 ↩
"NICK ZEDD (1958–2022)". Artforum. February 28, 2022. Retrieved March 5, 2022. https://www.artforum.com/news/nick-zedd-1958-2022-88031 ↩
"NICK ZEDD (1958–2022)". Artforum. Retrieved November 4, 2024. https://www.artforum.com/news/nick-zedd-1958-2022-88031 ↩
"Interview with Controversial Artist, Filmmaker, and Writer Nick Zedd including his Manifesto". Medium. April 18, 2022. Retrieved November 4, 2024. https://tamralucid.medium.com/interview-with-controversial-artist-filmmaker-and-writer-nick-zedd-f78eeacb3268 ↩
Anderson, Lincoln (March 22, 2022). "Nick Zedd, East Village transgressive filmmaker, dies at 63". The Village Sun. https://thevillagesun.com/nick-zedd-east-village-transgressive-filmmaker-dies-at-63 ↩
"New York Film and Video: No Wave–Transgressive". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved August 26, 2020. https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/3892 ↩
Davis, Avi (July 1, 2014). "Why Cinema of Transgression Director Nick Zedd Stayed Underground". Vice. Retrieved August 26, 2020. https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/dpwd7v/a-new-breed-of-asshole-0000327-v21n5 ↩