CCS BARD

A collaboration between Malene Dam, Bridget de Gersigny, and Ted Kerr

_Malene – This is a starting-off point. I would love for you both to add your own ideas for readings and questions regarding artistic, curatorial, and political commitments linked to ideas around temporality.

Bridget – Do you wanna meet at a cool/open/quietish place in Bklyn or at your house?

Ted – Is it okay to admit I am nervous? It has been a long time since I have been held accountable in this way. I was moved by questions you both asked today: How do we find things queerly? How can we understand our practice as a curatorial practice? Which leads me to ask: Even when I am “selfishly” learning, am I also learning with and for others? And how does this relate to accountability?

Bridget – So, I loved the idea, Malene, of the nature of the reading group providing both a challenge and possibly a route to redefine a curatorial methodology. I also liked what you said about cultural movements: “As much as a culture can move us forward it can also move us back.” This feels very ‘temporal,’ which I’m still figuring out. What happens when we are no longer outsiders, but exist somewhere between the fringe and the centre?

Malene – Something to keep in mind: what questions are staying with us, which are left behind, and are some resolved?

Bridget – Reading these emails on the phone, thinking about underground time, hands and proximity. This silly mail will only send when I reunite with the network.

“NO NARRATIVE PRECEDED US”_ is a continuation of the process described above. It borrows its title from Hilton Als’s White Girls.

Malene Dam is a Danish born artist and curator, currently a student at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. She engages in an array of issues related to contemporary society, most recently with a strong focus on queer temporality, histories of feminism, education, and conflict. Her research-based practice addresses temporal and spatial notions of cultural collectivizations, inquiring how discourses situate themselves as knowledge. She holds a BFA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and a MFA in Photography and Media from CalArts.

Bridget de Gersigny is a South African born, visual artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Her work draws upon political history and technological communications, often related to shifting ideologies, through a post-colonial and queer lens. She is a 2014 Queer/Art/Mentorship Fellow and recently completed her MFA at ICP-Bard. She holds a BA degree from the University of Cape Town, in Psychology and Literature, and Art History from University of South Africa.

Canadian born Ted Kerr is a New York based artist, writer and organizer whose work focuses on queerness, HIV/AIDS and community. He was the 2011 Artist in Residence at the Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary, and is currently the programs manager at Visual AIDS.