Benjamin Gerdes
Assistant Professor of Broadcasting
B.A. in Modern Culture and Media, Brown UniversityM.F.A. in Integrated Media Arts, Hunter CollegeCertificate, Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, Studio Art Fellow
Benjamin.Gerdes@liu.edu
Description
Benj Gerdes is an artist, writer, and organizer working in video, film, and related public formats, individually as well as collaboratively. He is interested in intersections of radical politics, knowledge production, and popular imagination. His work focuses on the affective and social consequences of economic and state regimes, often via historical research, as well as the critical methods through which art and cultural projects can contribute to social change in the present. His work has been exhibited and screened at venues including the Centre Pompidou, National Gallery of Art, New Museum, REDCAT Gallery, Rotterdam International Film Festival, and the Tate Modern. Writings have been published in October, The Journal of Aesthetics + Protest, Incite! and Rethinking Marxism. He has lectured and taught widely in the United States and internationally; prior to assuming his current position at LIU Post this included positions at Cooper Union, Bard College, and Parsons the New School for Art and Design.
Specialties
Collaborative art and media production, narrative/non-fiction hybrids, the film/video essay, experimental non-fiction media, new models of production via emergent technologies, media and social movements, transnational immigration politics, alternatives to capitalism, creative practices at the intersection of art and activism.
Publications
Roundtable. “Child as Material” e-flux journal, SUPERCOMMUNITY (special edition for 56th Venice Biennale) Summer 2015 [+Beatriz Balanta, Jennifer Hayashida, Christopher Myers, Brian Kuan Wood, Mary Walling Blackburn]
“Slow People” The Second World Congress of Free Artists ed. Camel Collective Aarhus: Aarhua Kunsthall/Danish Arts Council, 2013. 118-132. [+Jennifer Hayashida]
“Cleveland, What’s The Matter With Florida?” essay with photos in “…in a most dangerous manner,” art feature in Ninth Letter vol.7 no.1, Spring/Summer 2010
“Means in Common: Free Association” Rethinking Marxism 22 (3) January 2010 Special Issue: The Commons [16 Beaver Group]
“Protests Past and Protest Futures” Interview w/ Gavin Grindon and Rodrigo Nunes, Journal of Aesthetics + Protest, Fall 2009
“No More Strike Anywhere,” essay with photographs, Rethinking Marxism April 2008 Issue [+ Jennifer Hayashida]
“Survey: Artists Respond to the Iraq War” October 123, Winter 2008 [16 Beaver Group]
Lectures and Presentations
Visiting Artist Lecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art, School of Language, Space and Scale, MFA Program, Copenhagen, Denmark
Panelist. “CHILD AS MATERIAL: The Unthinkable” e-flux journal, moderated by Mary Walling Blackburn and Brian Kuan Wood, e-flux, New York, NY [+Jennifer Hayashida]
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Featured Artist, “Artist Collectives and Artistic Collectivism,” SMFA Graduate Colloquium, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Visiting Artist Lecture Series, Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, MFA Program in Documentary and Experimental Media, and Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University, Durham, NC
Visiting Artist Series, Cornell School of Art, Architecture, and Planning, Ithaca, NY [+ Jennifer Hayashida}
RECENT CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
“Class is always in session—some propositions on the limits of critique within neoliberal societies via self-organized educational projects by the few who decided to declare themselves artists…” “Educational Outliers and Education as Art Practice,” College Art Association Annual Conference 2015, New York, NY
“broken screens,” Interactive Narratives, New Media and Social Engagement, Victoria College, University of Toronto, Canada
“Answers without questioning: talking about affect and documentary with the non-‐
guilty, or what color are the bodies in the room?” Codes and Modes: The Character of Documentary Culture, Hunter College, CUNY, New York, NY
Digital Labor: Sweatshops, Picket Lines, and Barricades, The New School, New York, NY
“International Bodies Do Decent Work” Lines and Nodes: Infrastructure, Media and Aesthetics, New York University, New York, NY [+Jennifer Hayashida]
“Architectures of Dispersion: Documentary Across Media” Documentary Now!
University College London, London, UK.
Expanding the Documentary: New Media and Digital Documentary, Symposium, Neuberger Museum of Art, SUNY Purchase School of Film and Media Studies, Purchase, NY
“Video Art as Mass Media?” Panel Co-Chair, Radical Art Caucus Panel, College Art Association Annual Conference 2011, New York, NY
Exhibits
Selected Screenings
Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria
Bozar Cinema, Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels
The Space, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK
Casa Vecina (Fundación del Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México, A.C.), Mexico City, Mexico
Museum of the Moving Image, Queens, NY
Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.,
98WEEKS Project Space, Beirut, Lebanon
Rotterdam International Film Festival, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Pompidou Center, Paris, France
Flaherty NYC, Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY
Robert Flaherty Film Seminar
Migrating Forms Festival, New York, NY
Images Festival, Toronto, Canada
Selected Group Exhibitions / Public Projects
“Past is Not Post” / exhibition curated by Benj Gerdes & Lasse Lau, Edith Russ Haus für Medienkunst, Odenburg, Germany
“Agitprop!” / Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
[as member of the group Friends of William Blake]
“Rewriting Histories” / exhibition curated by Benj Gerdes & Lasse Lau, Fotografisk Center, Copenhagen, Denmark
55th October Salon, Belgrade
“Communities in Conversation” / curated by AKCG, Konsthall C, Stockholm, Sweden
“Politricks” / curated by Helena Kritis, Beursschouwburg, Brussels, Belgium
“Radical Citizenship: The Tutorials” in The Silent University Project Room / organized by the Anhoek School, The Tate Modern, London, UK
“The Second World Congress of Free Artists”/ organized by CAMEL, Center for Contemporary Art, Aarhus, Denmark
“Postcards to AZ” in “Museum as Hub: In and Out of Context: REDUX” / New Museum, New York, NY [+Jennifer Hayashida]
“Never Very Far Apart” / curated by Ryan Inouye, REDCAT Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
“In A Most Dangerous Manner” / curated by Steven Lam and Sarah Ross, SPACES, Cleveland, OH
Recent Curation
“Rewriting Histories” / exhibition curated by Benj Gerdes & Lasse Lau, Fotografisk Center & Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark
Award: Best Exhibition of 2015, Kulturkongen, Denmark
Interviews
Penny Lane “An Interview with Benj Gerdes and Jennifer Hayashida” The Brooklyn Rail
September 2010 <http://brooklynrail.org/2010/09/film/an-interview-with-benj-gerdes-and-jennifer-hayashida>
