Memorabilia: Queer Countercultures and Moving Image Art will weave a history of queer countercultures through moving image art. Inspired by Nordeen’s background as curator of the film series Dirty Looks, each post—presented in text and as a podcast series—will detail an artist, title, locale, or collective distinct for its contribution to the development of queer self-representation. Memorabilia will be a crash course in the context and productions of these artists or milieux intended to deepen our understanding of the moments that advanced queer art and visibility.
Bradford Nordeen is interested in small circulation publishing and the colloquial. He holds a BFA in photography and media from CalArts School of Art and a masters degree in cinema cultures from King’s College London. He is the founder of the queer film non-profit Dirty Looks, which publishes the Dirty Looks Volume series annually, featuring essay commissions, artist writings, archival images, and long-form writing that echoes Dirty Looks’s monthly programming. His writing has also appeared in Afterimage, Little Joe, X-TRA, Lambda Literary, the Huffington Post, Art in America, Fanzine, BUTT, and Slant. With the Museum of Modern Art, Nordeen developed a reader for Dirty Looks. He has also produced catalogue essays for the exhibitions Check Your Vernacular (RISD), THINGS: a queer legacy of graphic art and play (Participant Inc + ONE National Archives), and wandering another (2nd Floor Projects).