Curator's Talk with Benj Gerdes

Talk with Benj Gerdes, one of the curators of our next Exhibition Past is Not Post.

Thursday, 2nd of February | 7pm | Seminar room of the Edith-Russ-Haus | in English language

Past is Not Post examines a growing number of artists working in relationship to archival research or investigations of historical memory. While the sites, methods, and circumstances of these practices remain diverse, there is a common artistic impulse to work through history as a backdoor when options in the present seem closed. Given the ambiguous role of artists in contemporary societies, particularly the difficulty of connecting to existing political and social struggles, the intersectional and incomplete stories of the past offer alternate approaches. Can this engagement of the past create spaces to rearticulate our collective possibilities and demands, spaces emblematic of both resistance and retreat?

Benj Gerdes (b. in 1978 in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, USA) lives in New York, USA working as an artist, writer, and organizer. He is interested in intersections of radical politics, knowledge production, and popular imagination. Gerdes studied at Brown University, Hunter College, the City University of New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, USA. His work has been exhibited at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the New Museum, New York; and Tate Modern, London, among others.