Discrit

Discrit (“critical discourse” / “discourse critique”) is an initiative of public knowledge-sharing and discussion. Spanning lectures, seminar-style discussions, critiques, and screenings, Discrit provides the public with programming dedicated to explorations of contemporary art and culture and free, university-quality art education. Discrit is Joey Molina and Chris Fernald.

Joey Molina is a multi-disciplinary artist and scholar working between video, installation, and collage. Their work engages with visual culture as material, object, and ephemera. Molina’s research interests include horror films, queer theory, and new media. They received their BA from Georgia State University in 2013 and will be on track for their MA in Film and Video at Georgia State University in Fall 2020.

Chris Fernald is an artist, writer, and cultural programmer. He is the Co-Founder of Discrit and a Graduate Student in the History of Art at Williams College. His work has been exhibited in group shows in New York and Mexico City, and his poetry and art criticism have seen publication in both Canada and the US. His writing and creative work often examine how modernity’s crises disassemble and re-constitute notions of personhood. Recurring subjects of interest include techno-spirituality, post-human cosmologies, lifestyle minimalism, animism, and the digital’s relation to the afterlife. He received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2013.

Art historian and writer julia elizabeth neal (she/her) specializes in modern and contemporary art in the United States, with a particular focus on conceptual and performance-based practices by Black artists engaging politics of identity and (trans)nationalism since the “post-war” era. Her current project, Who Taught You to Think (Like That): Benjamin Patterson’s Conceptual Aesthetic historicizes the artist’s persistent practice of deconstructing sociocultural perceptions and value systems. Presently Neal is “dissertating” to complete doctoral candidacy at the University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation is supported by the German-American Fulbright Commission, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Getty Research Institute.
As consultant to the Estate of Benjamin Patterson, Neal completed Performance Works within the Estate of Benjamin Patterson: A Catalogue Raisonné Volume I (October 2020, pp. 1-118, forthcoming), the first medium-specific volume inventorying works in-situ in Hamburg. Neal has contributed research and writing for varied institutions and periodicals, including Suzanne Jackson: Five Decades, Texte zur Kunst, NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, all-over Magazin für Kunst und Äesthetik, and Common Wealth: Art by African Americans in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Neal has since pursued professional projects keen to critical historiography and African American Art history, which involves lecturing at Georgia State University and participating in panels at the College Art Association’s Annual Conference with regard to critical and liberatory pedagogies.