April 5 is partly interesting because it’s the birthday of Tulse Luper, in Newport, Wales, in 1911. Or Tulse might be said to have been born April 5, 1942, also in Newport. It’s an intricate story, best told in the form of several valises; a subset of a much larger collection:
Valise 1: It’s possible that Luper is still around. It’s also possible that only one person knows. That person would be Peter Greenaway, a British film director, artist, and writer. His films are mostly not mainstream Hollywood-style movies except for The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. Greenaway was also born in Newport, Wales, on April 5 in 1942. You might see that as a coincidence, or you might interpret it as a key.
Valise 92: The atomic number of uranium is 92. It may have been a coincidence that Luper was in Moab, Utah in 1928 when uranium was first discovered there. Uranium was definitely a critical facet of the history of the 20th Century, and Luper’s presence at the place where the radioactive material for the first atomic weapons was found turned out to be only the first of his many intersections with pivotal events of the century.
Valise 5: Peter Greenaway grew up in London, where his family moved at the end of WWII. His first love was art, and he enrolled in the Walthamstow College of Art in 1962, working primarily as a muralist. Then in 1965 he made his first film, Death of Sentiment. It was a cinematic essay about the furniture found in London churchyards. On the strength of that work, he joined the Central Office of Information (COI), which was at the time the marketing and communication agency of the UK government. Greenaway worked there for fifteen years, directing and editing films. The COI closed in 2011, Tulse Luper’s centennial year.
Valise 63: The actual beginning of World War 2 is a bit hard to pin down, but one important date in its rise was in 1940, when the German army invaded Belgium. Antwerp is the third-largest city in Belgium, and has been an important site both economically and culturally since at least the 1500s. It was the first host city for the World Gymnastics Championships, in 1911. It’s a port city, and that made it strategically important. When Germany invaded Belgium, Tulse Luper was there, in Antwerp.
Valise 18: Peter Greenaway wrote a series of opera libretti called the Death of a Composer series. It addresses the similarities and coincidences among the deaths of ten 20th-century composers, from Anton Webern (an Austrian composer accidentally shot during WWII) to John Lennon. All of the composers left clues in their work about their deaths. Other than Lennon and Webern, though, the composers were fictitious.
Valise 80: Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish architect, diplomat, and humanitarian whose work in Budapest in 1944 saved thousands of Jewish people from the Nazis by issuing them passports and sheltering them in buildings he declared to be Swedish territory. Tulse Luper met Wallenberg in Budapest, and when the Russian Red Army took the city and arrested Wallenberg because they suspected him of espionage, Luper accompanied Wallenberg to Moscow. Wallenberg disappeared and was never seen again. Luper next surfaced in 1963, when he was present at a checkpoint between East and West Berlin.
Valise 21: Peter Greenaway initiated a huge project in 2000, called the Tulse Luper Suitcases. The initial project plan was to make four feature films, a 16-episode TV series, issue 92 DVDs, as well as websites, CD-ROMs, and books. The films were labeled Parts 1, 2, and 3. Part 1 was released first, followed by Part 3, then 2. There was also an interactive web game, The Tulse Luper Journey. The game had a single winner, whose prize was a free trip to many of Luper’s locations. After that trip, the fourth film, A Life in Suitcases, was released.
Valise 46: Although much of Luper’s life was spent in various prisons, and has been described as a “professional prisoner,” he carefully collected artifacts on his journeys. He stored them in suitcases, 92 of which have been found in some of the places he visited. Two books have been published about Luper and his curation of specific locations: Tulse Luper in Turin and Tulse Luper in Venice.
Valise 7: Peter Greenaway now resides in Amsterdam, and works closely with cinematographer Sacha Vierny. He turns 82 today. Tulse Luper turns 124, and is probably in prison somewhere in the world.
