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Benj Gerdes

Adjunct Instructor

Benj Gerdes is an artist and organizer working in film, video, and a number of other public formats. He frequently works in collaboration with other artists, activists, and theorists, including as a member of 16 Beaver Group. He is interested in intersections of political discourse, knowledge production, and popular imagination. His individual and collaborative work focuses on the affective and social consequences of economic and state regimes through historical research, dialogue, and participatory formalizations. Gerdes’ work has been exhibited widely in both traditional venues and emerging platforms, with the former including the Centre Pompidou, New Museum, REDCAT Gallery (Los Angeles), Rotterdam International Film Festival, Images Festival (Toronto), Flaherty Film Seminar, Museum of the Moving Image, The National Gallery (Washington, D.C.), Art in General, and Migrating Forms; and the latter more often including public performances and programs, web platforms, broadcast television, and publications such as e-flux journal, October, The Journal of Aesthetics + Protest, Ninth Letter, Incite! and Rethinking Marxism. He is the recipient of numerous residencies, including the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Woolworth Building Workspace Residency and Visual Arts Network (VAN) Exhibition Residency, and grants from the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, and the Experimental Television Center. He is a graduate of Brown University and Hunter College, and a former studio art fellow in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. He teaches Video at the Cooper Union School of Art.

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.